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Reception Cocoa
Make same as Breakfast Cocoa, and serve in place of Hot Chocolate at afternoon teas or receptions, accompanied by whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla. Flavor cocoa with one-half teaspoon vanilla, two teaspoons brandy or one-fourth teaspoon cinnamon. To offer variety, in place of whipped cream use one marshmallow to each cup, pouring cocoa over it. The cheapest grade must be used, as the more expensive ones do not melt.
A serving suggestion built on the book's Breakfast Cocoa, which is the recipe you need to have in front of you first. The notes below cover the parts that no longer read straightforwardly.
- The base recipeThis entry gives no quantities of its own; everything depends on the Breakfast Cocoa recipe elsewhere in the book, which you should read for its proportions rather than trusting a figure quoted here. Recipes of this type have the cocoa and sugar blended with a little boiling water and cooked briefly to a smooth paste before the milk goes in; skipping that stage leaves gritty cocoa floating on the surface.
- "In place of Hot Chocolate"The distinction the book is drawing is between cocoa powder and grated block chocolate, which carries all its cocoa butter and makes a much richer, heavier cup. Cocoa was considered the lighter, more suitable drink for an afternoon crowd.
- The brandyTwo teaspoons per what is not stated. Read against the vanilla and cinnamon alternatives it is more likely a flavouring for a batch than for a single cup, but the book does not say. Add it off the heat so it is not driven off.
- The marshmallow note"The cheapest grade must be used, as the more expensive ones do not melt" refers to period marshmallows, though the book does not explain why the firmer, dearer confections held their shape. Modern supermarket marshmallows are corn-syrup-and-gelatine foams that slump readily in hot liquid; use the small ones, one or two per cup.
- Whipped creamSweeten lightly and add the vanilla after soft peaks form. If it must stand through a reception, whip it just short of stiff and keep it cold; unstabilised cream begins to weep within the hour.
Choice Recipes was one of a long series of pamphlets issued by the Walter Baker & Co. chocolate works at Dorchester, Massachusetts, a firm that traced its origins to a mill established in the 1760s and that spent the late nineteenth century teaching American households the difference between its cocoa and its chocolate. Booklets like this one were advertising in the guise of instruction, and they were effective: recipes were solicited from cooking-school teachers and domestic writers whose names carried authority. The entry here belongs to the era of the formal afternoon reception, when a hostess poured a hot drink for callers and the choice between chocolate and cocoa was a small statement about how heavy an entertainment she intended. The marshmallow is the modern touch, a comparatively new grocery item at the turn of the century.