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Cocoa
Many improvements have been made of late years in the manufacture of this valuable article of diet. One of the best-known preparations of cocoa is Van Houten's, which contains a maximum proportion of the food constituents of the cocoa bean in a form easy of assimilation and digestion. The beverage is made in the following manner. Put into a breakfast-cup a tea-spoonful of white sugar, then half a tea-spoonful of the cocoa. Withdraw the spoon; fill the cup rapidly with boiling water, and then stir a little. Add milk, hot or cold, to taste.
A single cup of drinking cocoa, made by the pour-over method rather than by simmering in a pan. The proportions are lighter than most people now expect.
- Van Houten's is Dutch-process cocoaThe brand named here was the original alkalised cocoa powder, darker and milder than natural cocoa. Any Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa gives the intended result; natural cocoa will taste sharper and more acidic in the cup.
- A breakfast-cup is largeRoughly 8 to 10 fl oz, noticeably bigger than a teacup. That is the volume the half-teaspoon of cocoa is meant to fill.
- The strength is thin by modern tasteHalf a teaspoon of cocoa to a full breakfast-cup makes a pale, tea-like drink. Modern drinking chocolate runs to one or two heaped teaspoons per cup; scale up if you want the flavour you are used to.
- Why the sugar goes in firstCocoa powder is difficult to wet and clumps on contact with liquid. The dry sugar sitting under it in the cup may help keep the particles apart when the water hits, though the recipe asks only that the spoon be withdrawn and the cup filled rapidly rather than dribbling water in.
- Water genuinely boilingThe recipe specifies boiling water, and cocoa disperses better in it; water off the boil is more likely to leave the powder poorly wetted, and there is no pan stage here to make up for it.
- The milkCold milk added to a cup already diluted with water will make the drink tepid. Heat it if you are adding more than a splash.
- YieldOne cup. Multiply straightforwardly for more; the method as written is designed to be made cup by cup.
Coenraad van Houten's Amsterdam firm is generally credited with the two changes that made cocoa a drink rather than a rich, greasy infusion: a press that removed much of the cocoa butter, in the 1820s, and the alkali treatment that still bears the name Dutch process. Before that, chocolate had been drunk for centuries as a thick, ground, often spiced suspension that had to be whisked to keep it from separating. Defatted powder dissolved readily in a cup of boiling water, which is exactly what this entry describes, and it turned chocolate into a breakfast beverage on the same footing as tea and coffee. Cassell's naming a commercial brand outright is characteristic of late-Victorian household books, where a proprietary preparation was regarded as a guarantee of purity at a time when adulteration of cocoa with starch, flour and colouring was a live public concern.