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Chocolate Biscuits
Mix a quarter of a pound of finely-grated chocolate with a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted sugar, and moisten the mixture with sufficient beaten white of egg to make a softish paste. Mould this into small biscuits with a tea-spoon, and place these on a sheet of paper, leaving a little distance between the biscuits. Bake them in a moderate oven, and, when sufficiently cooked, take them out, and turn the sheets over so that the biscuits may rest on the table, and brush the paper immediately over the biscuits with a little water to loosen them. The addition of six ounces of sweet almonds, blanched and pounded, will convert these into chocolate macaroons. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per pound. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.
This is a meringue-bound confection rather than a dough biscuit: two parts dry, egg white as the only liquid. Everything hinges on the consistency of the paste.
- The hinge: add the egg white by degreesA quarter pound each of chocolate and sugar takes roughly one large egg white, sometimes less. Add it a teaspoon at a time until the mixture just holds a soft peak on the spoon; if it slumps, the biscuits spread into flat sheets and cannot be lifted.
- WeightsA quarter of a pound is 4 oz (about 115 g) each of chocolate and sugar; the almond version adds 6 oz (170 g), which makes a considerably drier, stiffer paste and may need a second egg white.
- What "chocolate" meantMost likely the plain hard chocolate of the period, sold in cakes and grated on a fine grater; whether it was sweetened is not stated here. A dark eating chocolate, grated cold, is a reasonable match; cocoa powder is not a substitute, as it absorbs far more egg white. The instruction to grate rather than melt suggests the paste relies on dry particles.
- Finely-sifted sugarNot modern granulated. Use caster sugar or, better, sift icing sugar with the grated chocolate so the two powders are evenly mixed before any liquid goes in.
- OvenA moderate oven of this period is usually reckoned at somewhere around 350F (175C), though the figure is only an estimate. For a sugar-and-egg-white paste that is on the hot side; 300-325F (150-160C) for the full twenty minutes gives a dry, crisp biscuit without scorching the sugar. They should lift away firm, not browned.
- The paper trickThe brushing with water was needed because Victorian bakers used plain writing or kitchen paper, to which meringue welds itself. On parchment or a silicone mat the biscuits release once cool and the step can be skipped entirely.
- Blanched and pounded almondsPound or pulse them to a coarse meal, not a smooth butter — the oil released by over-grinding will slacken the paste. Ground almonds from a packet work, though the texture is finer than intended.
- Yield and keepingTeaspoon-sized mounds give roughly 24 to 30 biscuits. Stored airtight they keep a week; in a damp kitchen they soften within a day and are best re-dried in a low oven.
- That price1s. 6d. per pound was the cost to the household, not a modern guide. Chocolate was the more expensive of the two main ingredients.
Chocolate biscuits of this kind belong to the family of egg-white-and-sugar confections that European confectioners had been making since the seventeenth century — macaroons, meringues, ratafias — and the recipe admits as much by turning itself into chocolate macaroons with the addition of almonds. That an English domestic dictionary of this period could treat grated eating chocolate as an ordinary store cupboard item reflects a real change: cocoa pressing and, later, moulded solid chocolate moved chocolate out of the drinking cup and onto the confectioner's bench over the middle decades of the century. The note that the quantity is "sufficient for a moderate-sized dish" points to a dessert course served from dishes rather than plated, with several small sweetmeats set out together.