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Chocolate Whip
Beat the yolks of three eggs and three tablespoons of sugar until light. Dissolve one heaping tablespoon of grated unsweetened chocolate, one tablespoon of sugar and one tablespoon of hot water; when dissolved, add slowly a pint of milk heated to boiling, pour this hot mixture over the beaten eggs and sugar, and cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until it thickens; when cool flavor with vanilla and place on ice. When ready to serve half fill small punch glasses with the custard, and heap over it whipped cream, sweetened and flavored.
— Mrs. L. B. Banker
A pouring custard layered under whipped cream — closer to a modern pot de crème thinned for a glass than to anything whipped. The whole dish hinges on keeping the custard below a simmer.
- The hinge: heat gently and stop earlyCook over barely simmering water, stirring constantly, until the custard coats a spoon and reads about 175-180F. Three yolks to a pint of milk is a thin custard, and it will curdle before it ever looks thick like pudding.
- Temper properlyThe recipe pours the hot chocolate-milk over the yolks; add it in a thin stream while whisking, then return everything to the double boiler. Dumping the boiling mixture in all at once risks curdling the yolks before the pan goes back on the heat.
- Grated unsweetened chocolateThis means a hard block of pure chocolate liquor, the kind sold in cakes and grated as needed. A modern unsweetened baking bar, finely chopped, is the same thing; one heaping tablespoon grated is only about 1/4 to 1/2 oz, so the custard is mild and leans on the sugar in the cream for balance.
- Dissolving the chocolateOne tablespoon of hot water will make a stiff paste rather than a solution. Work it smooth with the sugar over low heat before the milk goes in, or the finished custard may be gritty.
- "Place on ice"Refrigerate. In the period that meant setting the covered bowl in the icebox or in a pan of cracked ice; press plastic against the surface now to keep a skin from forming.
- Vanilla after cookingFlavoring when cool suits vanilla extract, whose aroma is driven off by a hot custard.
- Punch glasses and yieldA punch glass of the period held about 3 to 4 oz. Half-filled and capped with cream, a pint of milk gives six to eight servings; four to five if you use modern dessert glasses.
- The creamSweeten with a teaspoon or so of sugar per half cup of heavy cream and whip only to soft peaks so it can be heaped without weeping into the custard.
Chocolate "whips" and "creams" served in small glasses under a cap of whipped cream were a familiar light dessert in American households by the late nineteenth century, a period when block chocolate from firms such as Baker's and Walter Lowney was widely sold and ice could be had for chilling a custard in summer. The recipe carries the name of the contributor who vouched for it — Mrs. L. B. Banker — in the manner of community cookbooks. Its assumption that a household owns both a double boiler and a set of small punch glasses points to a comfortable middle-class table, where a dessert was expected to be seen as well as eaten.