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The Capulets and the Montagues. The Hatfields and the McCoys. Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal. These feuds are as nothing when compared to the rivalry over who owns the honor of having first developed the iconic campus dessert: fudge-bottom pie. The Badger community divides into two campuses. On one side, UW Housing and its followers insist that legendary chef Carson Gulley invented fudge-bottom pie, or FBP as no one calls it, during the time he oversaw the Van Hise dining hall, between 1927 and 1954. He published his recipe in his 1956 cookbook, Seasoning Secrets. On the other side, the Wisconsin Union and its devotees claim that two Union chefs, Lewis Marston ’32 and Maurice Coombs, developed FBP between 1940 and 1945. The thing is, both may be right: the UW might not have fudge-bottom pie but rather fudge-bottom pies. Housing’s version of FBP is different from the Union’s. The former relies on layered custard, vanilla over chocolate. The latter has a denser, thinner layer of chocolate under a vanilla custard. (See how to make your own Housing version in this video.) So who invented FBP? The answer might as well be all of them, so we’ll just credit the recipe to Maurson Gullston. Cram a slice in your pie hole and be happy with that.

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