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Cocoa Nibs
Cocoa nibs, or shells, are the coverings of the cocoa kernel. They should be soaked in water for twelve hours, then boiled in the same water till it is reduced to half the quantity. When cool, the oily matter should be taken from the top, as it would be likely to disagree with an invalid. It is then served like chocolate. Time to boil, five hours. A quarter of a pound of nibs should be boiled with three quarts of water. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A hot drink made by long extraction rather than by dissolving cocoa powder — the Victorian equivalent of a cocoa tea. It works, but almost every number in it belongs to a different pantry.
- Nibs and shells are not the same thingThe entry treats them as interchangeable, but nibs are the crushed roasted kernel and shells are the papery husk winnowed off it. Shells give a thin, faintly bitter, tea-like infusion; nibs give something much richer and darker. Buy whichever you actually want and expect quite different results.
- Five hours is far too long for nibsModern roasted nibs surrender their flavour in 20 to 30 minutes of gentle simmering. Hours of boiling drives off the aromatics and leaves a flat, scorched bitterness. Husks, being tougher and much less flavoursome, are the only part of this that ever justified a long extraction, and even then an hour is generous.
- The quantitiesA quarter pound is about 115 g; three imperial quarts is roughly 3.4 litres, reduced by half to about 1.7 litres. That is a very weak ratio by modern standards — for nibs, 60 g to a litre of water simmered briefly gives a drink with actual body.
- The twelve-hour soakBoiling in the soaking water is the important part, since whatever has leached out overnight is exactly what you are after. Leave it at room temperature in a cool kitchen or refrigerate it; there is nothing in cocoa to spoil dangerously, but a warm kitchen will turn it musty.
- Skimming the fatWhat rises and sets on the surface is cocoa butter, and the instruction to lift it off reflects the invalid-cookery habit of removing anything rich from a sickroom drink. There is no need to remove it unless you want a clearer, thinner cup; chilling makes it lift off in a sheet.
- Serving"Served like chocolate" means hot, in a cup, sweetened and let down with hot milk to taste. The infusion on its own is closer to a herbal tea than to drinking chocolate, so sugar and milk are doing most of the work.
- Caffeine and theobromineBoth are water-soluble and carry into the infusion, so this is not the wholly unstimulating drink its invalid-beverage reputation suggests. A shell infusion is generally the weaker of the two.
- The cost noteThe entry puts nibs at a shilling a pound, which was cheap for the period.
Cocoa shells were the waste stream of chocolate manufacture: after roasting, the beans were cracked and winnowed, and the husks sold off cheaply. Through the nineteenth century they are often said to have been brewed as a cheap hot drink in poor households, and the resulting infusion was widely recommended for invalids on the grounds that it gave the comfort of chocolate with almost none of the fat or substance the skimming instruction here is pure sickroom orthodoxy. The trade in cocoa shells faded as cocoa powder became cheap enough to buy outright, though nibs have returned to the shelves in the last few decades, sold to be eaten rather than steeped.