Home › Recipes › Hot Chocolate
Hot Chocolate
2 ounces Walter Baker & Co.'s Premium No. 1 Chocolate, Few grains salt, 1/4 cup boiling water, 1 quart milk, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cornstarch. Thoroughly mix sugar and cornstarch, and dilute with one-half cup cold milk. Scald remaining milk in double-boiler, add mixture and cook ten minutes, stirring constantly until mixture thickens slightly. Melt chocolate in small saucepan, placed in larger saucepan of boiling water, and add gradually boiling water and salt. Add to milk mixture, and beat until frothy, using a wire whisk or egg beater, thus preventing scum, which is so unsightly. Serve in chocolate cups, with whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla. If a thinner drink is desired omit cornstarch.
A sufficient quantity to allow for six people.
HOT CHOCOLATE (Made from Condensed Milk) 2 squares Walter Baker & Co.'s Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1/3 cup sugar, Few grains salt, 1 quart boiling water, 1 small can evaporated milk. Melt chocolate in saucepan, placed over larger saucepan of boiling water; then add sugar and salt. Pour on, gradually, boiling water; again bring to the boiling point, and let boil five minutes. Add milk, mill, and boil two minutes.
Two versions of the same drink: a thickened milk chocolate and a leaner one built on boiling water and canned milk. Both depend on melting the chocolate separately and beating the finished drink hard.
- The chocolatePremium No. 1 was unsweetened baking chocolate, not Dutched. Use plain unsweetened baking chocolate; 2 ounces is 2 squares, so the two recipes call for the same amount.
- The hingeBeat the finished drink until frothy before serving. This is not decoration -- whisking emulsifies the cocoa butter into the milk and stops the film of skin forming as it stands.
- "Mill"In the second recipe, to mill means to work the drink with a molinillo or chocolate mill, the wooden whisk twirled between the palms. A wire whisk or an immersion blender does the same job.
- Evaporated vs. condensedThe heading says condensed milk but the ingredient list says evaporated, and evaporated is what is meant -- unsweetened. Sweetened condensed milk would make the drink cloying. A small can is about 5-6 ounces; a modern 12-ounce can, halved, is close enough.
- CornstarchOne teaspoon in a quart gives body rather than a real thickening; the ten minutes of cooking is to hydrate the starch and cook out the raw taste. Diluting it in cold milk first is what keeps it from lumping.
- Double boilerScalding the milk over water rather than direct heat prevents a scorched layer on the pan bottom. A heavy saucepan on low heat works if you stir, but milk plus sugar plus starch catches easily.
- Yield and cupsA quart of liquid plus milk serves six in the small handleless chocolate cups of the period -- about 5 ounces each. In modern mugs, expect four servings.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, traced its chocolate mills back to the 1760s and by the turn of the twentieth century was the best-known chocolate name in the United States; the company issued small recipe booklets like this one as advertising, with several editions compiled by Maria Parloa, who was associated with the Boston Cooking School. The two versions here might be read as marking a division in American drinking chocolate: the milk-based cup, thickened slightly with starch and crowned with whipped cream, suggests the parlor and the afternoon call, while the water-and-canned-milk version looks like the practical one for households without reliable fresh milk. The instruction to "mill" the chocolate is a survival from the Spanish colonial method, where the molinillo was standard equipment; the first recipe here offers the option of a whisk or an egg beater, while the second simply says "mill."