The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎. Clear consensus not to delete, but views remain evenly split between Keep and Merge, with strong arguments presented by both sides. A merge proposal on the target's Talk page may be a better venue to reach a conclusion. Owen× ☎ 13:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fudge cake (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Non-notable chocolate cake variant that does not pass WP:GNG, references consist of recipes and trivial mentions. WP:BEFORE check yielded no sources that show WP:SIGCOV. BaduFerreira (talk) 17:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. BaduFerreira (talk) 17:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, very distinctive kind of cake. Hyperbolick (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eg, https://magazine.wellesley.edu/winter-2023/oh-fudge Hyperbolick (talk) 20:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • This source is for Wellesley Fudge Cake, whereas the article that I nominated is about Fudge cake. They appear to be two different desserts. Regardless, we need more than one reliable source to show a topic's notability BaduFerreira (talk) 21:57, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Rejecting outright the proposition that “Wellesley Fudge Cake" is anything but some kind of fudge cake. Considering chocolate cake lists a dozen different kinds. There can be different kinds of a thing. Suppose it could be emerged into chocolate cake. Hyperbolick (talk) 06:04, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep: I have found some additional sources: [1], [2], [3]. I do realize that these are just blogs, but I think it's generally hard to find more reliable online sources when it comes to food recipes. Possibly someone with access to cookbooks could add such a reference, as cookbooks seem to be used a lot on food-related articles. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 10:54, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Fudge cake article is about a dessert called fudge cake, not its recipe. Recipes cannot be used as reliable sources because every food has a recipe for how to make it. We need several sources that speak about the significance of Fudge cake to prove its notability and I have not found any sources that suggest that Fudge cake is a notable cake. None of the sources that you've provided are reliable. BaduFerreira (talk) 12:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge with chocolate cake. While it does seem to be a distinct kind of chocolate cake, it doesn't seem to have any particular ingredient or cooking/construction process that distinguishes it from a generic chocolate cake (like a red velvet cake) or cultural prominence (like a Black Forest cake). But given that it is a specific variety of chocolate cake, with a defined recipe and expected outcome, it should be explained to at least some degree. The Cheesecake article is, I think, a fairly good example of how variations of a food should be treated (assuming that the variations can be sourced and don't meet WP:GNG). Ships&Space (talk) 20:59, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge with chocolate cake, which this is a variety of. Reywas92^Talk 04:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:16, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge. I assume that this is only the ordinary chocolate fudge cake and not, e.g., Tunnel of Fudge cake (which is separately notable, and also impossible to make any longer due to the key ingredient being discontinued). The ordinary chocolate cakes (i.e., American-style layer cakes – not tortes, not flourless, etc.) can be distinguished into at least the categories of devil's food cake, fudge cake, and German chocolate cake (per "Chocolate" by Maricel Presilla in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America) and perhaps, although this assertion confuses me, buttermilk ("Cake" by Sally Parham in same; she brushes past but doesn't name Mahogany cake, which is the transitional point in the 1880s, just before brownies [1890s] and the true chocolate cake [maybe around 1900] [though some consider mahogany cake to be the first chocolate cake [4], and there is at least one recipe from early in the 19th century for a chocolate cake – though not for a modern one, as baking powder didn't exist then]). Devil's food cake is made with Dutch-process cocoa powder and baking soda (the combination of these two produces a reddish tinge), and German's uses pre-sweetened chocolate bars, so those two are easy to separate, but fudge cake and chocolate cake both have similar ingredients. This source says the difference between fudge cake and chocolate cake is in the texture (fudge cake is moister and denser), and then describes differences in mixing technique (chocolate uses the creaming method and fudge uses the stirring method). From the description, Texas sheet cake (which currently redirects to a mostly irrelevant page, and is probably notable) is a fudge cake. I think that the labels are not always used with great precision. For example, blackout cake was originally called a chocolate fudge cake, but this source says the cake layers are devil's food cake, and our article calls it a (plain) chocolate cake. The Wellesley Fudge Cake from the early 20th century is one of the early versions of fudge cake. Wherever the information ends up, the first box mix specifically marketed as chocolate fudge cake might have been in 1948 by Pillsbury ("Cake mix" by Laura Shapiro in The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets; note that Duff's put out a mix for Devil's food cake in the 1930s). Because the line is so porous, it might be better to merge fudge cake into chocolate cake, than to attempt drawing a firm line between them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Very well known type of cake, often served in restaurants. The Banner talk 15:38, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting to see whether the consensus is to Keep or Merge. Thi AFD can be closed at any time a closer sees a consensus, it doesn't need to remain open a full week.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:42, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep If the internet search results are any indicator, either white or black chocolate, the cake is extremely popular. Doing a Google searth, there are just recipe, after recipe, after recipe. Some of those come packaged as such, and some are individual reader recipes. — Maile (talk) 03:50, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  Sure, but what is there to say about these recipes as a whole that couldn't be included in an improved Chocolate cake other than the mere fact that they exist??? I'm really astonished that an editor as experienced as you just wrote something as unencyclopedic as "A Google search on the white chocolate cake brings up numerous recipes." So what? Adding a link to "HoosierMomOf5"'s recipe (WP:UGC) that was "off the side of a cake mix box" does nothing to refute the nomination. Putting a chocolate–butter "fudge" layer on a white cake is very much not even a "variant" of a chocolate cake that itself has a fudgey consistency, even if people use the same word to describe them, and there's no basis to having a separate page for these to say nothing, apparently, except that "recipes using this particular word exist". Reywas92^Talk 20:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• I also have to admire that the second-most-recent edit before this nomination changed the intro from "A fudge cake is a chocolate cake containing fudge" to "A fudge cake is a chocolate cake, which, despite its name, does not contain fudge." What a junk article, vagueness about a name rather than useful content about anything specific. Reywas92^Talk 21:01, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - as much as I hate it, certain celebrities have made this notable. There are lots of news stories about a certain past president who loves it, and there are cookbook recipes, blogs, etc., about this. Bearian (talk) 14:34, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge into chocolate cake. Neither article has a lot to it, so it would all become stronger together. The need for a separate fudge cake article is not clear. Doczilla _{Ohhhhhh, no!} 05:07, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.