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Sugar: a Great Source of Heat and Energy: Chocolate
CHOCOLATE DIPPED BONBONS Slightly sweetened chocolate suitable for dipping candy may be bought in cakes like those sold for cooking purposes and at the same price. As depth of chocolate is needed and all chocolate left over may be used again and again, at least half a pound should be taken, no matter how little dipping is to be done. Break the chocolate in very small pieces, put into a small agate cup and set into warm (not hot) water. If a tiny double boiler be available, so much the better. Stir the chocolate occasionally while it is melting, being careful that no drop of water gets into the chocolate. When the chocolate is cooled to about 70 deg F., or a little below lukewarm, it is ready for use. Drop in a center, with a dipping fork push it below the chocolate, lift, and when drained a little drop onto a piece of oilcloth or waxed paper. If the candy is to be smooth on top, draw the fork across the edge of the chocolate dish (to remove superfluous chocolate), then slide the candy onto the oilcloth. If there is to be a design on top, let the top of the candy be downward in the chocolate; turn the candy upside down from the fork and draw the fork over the top. Remove to a cool place, to "set" the chocolate. CHOCOLATE DIPPED NUTS, GINGER ROOT, OYSTERETTES, ETC. Almonds, unblanched, are dipped with a design on top. Peanuts, with skin discarded, are dipped and dropped in clusters. Drop two or three nuts, dipped one by one, side by side, then drop others above; the chocolate runs together and forms a neat looking and dainty confection. Strips of preserved ginger root are particularly good, dipped in chocolate. Fine-chopped peanuts or almonds, or figs, dates or ginger root may be added to the chocolate; in this oysterettes may be dipped, to produce a very agreeable confection for Sunday Night tea, etc.
This is a dipping method rather than a formula, and everything depends on the temperature and dryness of the chocolate. A few of the book's specifics have shifted since.
- The one thing that ruins itNo water may touch the chocolate — not a drop of condensation off the lid, not steam from the pan. Wet chocolate seizes into a stiff, grainy paste that cannot be brought back for dipping. Dry the bowl and the fork, and keep the water beneath at a bare 110–115F.
- That 70F figureCocoa butter is solid at 70F, so chocolate cannot be dipped at that temperature as we understand it; treat the number as unreliable. Dark chocolate is worked at 88–90F, milk chocolate at 86–88F, which is indeed a little below lukewarm to the lip and is probably what was meant.
- "Slightly sweetened chocolate in cakes"A lightly sweetened block chocolate sold for dipping, which the book says came in cakes like, and at the same price as, the cooking chocolate of the day. Modern equivalents are couverture or good chocolate chips or bars at 55-70% cacao; candy melts and compound coatings behave differently, setting without a true temper.
- TemperingThe instruction to melt gently and cool before dipping is a rough temper. For a shell that sets glossy and snaps, melt to about 115F, cool to 82F while stirring, then rewarm to 88–90F, or simply stir in a handful of chopped unmelted chocolate as it cools. Untempered chocolate still tastes fine but sets soft and streaked.
- Agate cupEnamelled steel. Any small heatproof bowl works; a narrow, deep one is better than a wide one because it gives the depth of chocolate the recipe insists on.
- OilclothUse parchment, waxed paper or a silicone mat. Set the dipped pieces in a cool dry room at 60–65F, not the refrigerator, which condenses moisture on the surface and dulls it.
- OysterettesThe small plain soup or oyster crackers, sold under that name by the National Biscuit Company in this period. Any plain oyster cracker or small saltine gives the same salty-sweet effect.
- Half a pound minimumThe advice holds: you need depth to submerge a center, and as the recipe says, the surplus can be scraped up, cooled and used again.
The chapter heading tells you as much as the recipe does: by the time Cooking for Two appeared in 1909, Janet McKenzie Hill was writing for readers who had absorbed the new calorimetry of Atwater and company, in which sugar was catalogued as fuel -- "a great source of heat and energy" -- and candy could be defended on nutritional grounds rather than merely indulged. Home dipping of bonbons was a familiar domestic craft in this period, and the recipe itself makes the economic case: dipping chocolate cost no more than the cakes sold for cooking. The dipping fork, the sheet of oilcloth and the trick of turning the piece over to leave a mark on top are the confectioner's methods scaled down for a kitchen table. Oysterettes dipped in nut-studded chocolate, offered at Sunday night tea, suggest the setting the book addresses throughout: the informal cold supper of a small household.