Falcon Cocoa
This is a preparation for the special use of druggists and others in making hot or cold soda. It forms the basis for a delicious, refreshing, nourishing and strengthening drink.
It is absolutely pure. It is easily made. It possesses the full strength and natural flavor of the cocoa-bean. No chemicals are used in its preparation. The directions for making one gallon of syrup are as follows: 8 ounces of Falcon Cocoa, 8 1/2 pounds of white sugar, 2 1/2 quarts of water.
Thoroughly dissolve the cocoa in hot water, then add the sugar and heat until the mixture boils. Strain while hot. After it has become cool, vanilla may be added if desired.
The Trade is supplied with 1, 4 or 10 Ib. decorated canisters and 25 Ib. drums.
Trade-mark on every package
A soda-fountain syrup written for the drugstore trade rather than the home kitchen, but it scales down without trouble and makes an excellent base for cocoa sodas and iced chocolate.
- What Falcon Cocoa wasA plain unsweetened cocoa powder sold in bulk to the trade, with the cocoa butter partly pressed out; the page itself names no maker. Any natural (non-alkalized) unsweetened cocoa is the right substitute; Dutch-process will give a darker, milder syrup with less of the sharp bean flavor the copy is boasting about.
- Scale it downThe full batch is a gallon. A quarter batch is 2 oz cocoa (about 2/3 cup), 2 lb 2 oz sugar (roughly 4 3/4 cups), and 2 1/2 cups water, yielding about a quart.
- The sugar is not a typoEight and a half pounds to two and a half quarts is close to a saturated syrup, and that density is the point: it keeps at fountain temperatures and stands up to dilution with soda water. Reducing the sugar gives you a thin, quick-souring cocoa water.
- Make a paste firstCocoa powder floats and clumps. Whisk it with a small amount of the hot water into a smooth paste, then thin with the rest before the sugar goes in, or you will be straining out lumps rather than sediment.
- Boil briefly, stir constantlyWith this much sugar the pan scorches fast and cocoa solids settle and burn on the bottom. Bring it just to a full boil and take it off; prolonged boiling pushes the syrup toward candy density.
- Strain while hotAs written, and for good reason: the syrup is much harder to push through a sieve once it has cooled and thickened. A fine mesh or a doubled cheesecloth catches the undissolved cocoa fines.
- Vanilla after coolingVanilla extract is alcohol-based and its aromatics flash off in a boiling syrup. A tablespoon or two per quart, stirred in cold, is plenty.
- Serving and keepingFigure 1 to 1 1/2 oz of syrup in a glass, topped with cold soda water and stirred hard; for the "hot soda" the copy mentions, hot water in place of soda water is the obvious reading. Cocoa solids settle, so shake before each use, and keep it refrigerated -- sugar slows spoilage but does not prevent surface mold.
This entry is really advertising copy dressed as a formula: a bulk cocoa was being sold to the soda-fountain trade, which in the 1890s and 1900s meant druggists. American pharmacies had made themselves the country's beverage counters, and a chocolate soda or a cup of hot soda-fountain cocoa was dispensed across the same marble as headache powders. The insistence that the product is "absolutely pure" and that "no chemicals are used in its preparation" belongs to the long agitation over food adulteration that produced the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 -- cocoa was a frequent target of the reformers, being easy to cut with starch, flour, or shell, and alkalizing agents were regarded with suspicion by makers who sold on the strength of a plain pressed bean. The canisters and 25-pound drums at the end are the giveaway that no household was meant to read this page as a recipe at all.