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Water, Making of Tea, Coffee, Etc: Chocolate
COCOA AND CHOCOLATE Average composition of cocoa and chocolate as purchased. - Atwater. Water Protein Fat Per cent. Per cent. Percent. Cocoa . . 4.6 21.6 28.9 Chocolate . . 5.9 12.9 48.7 Carbohydrates Ash Food Value Per cent. Per cent. Per lb. Cocoa . . 37.3 7.2 2.320 Cal. Chocolate . . 30.3 2.2 2.860 Cal. In tea and coffee, properties of the leaf and bean, respectively, soluble in water, are all that are used in the beverage, but in cocoa and chocolate, both of which are made from cocoa seeds or beans, the beans themselves, fine-powdered, form an integral part of the beverage. Then cocoa and chocolate become food as well as drink. Theobromine, the stimulating principle in cocoa beans, is much less pronounced in its effects than the corresponding principle in tea or coffee. The high percentage of fat present in the bean (see composition), though some of this is removed in the process of manufacture, together with the other food principles, renders the beverage too rich for use in conjunction with hearty food. As a rule, in making cocoa, follow the directions presented with the package, keeping in mind that, in general, boiling the mixture will improve it. In the manufacture of chocolate, starch is added, and thus beverages made from chocolate call for cooking. TWO CUPS OF CHOCOLATE One ounce of chocolate. Two tablespoonfuls of sugar. One-half cup of boiling water. One cup and one-half of hot milk (or part milk and part water). Melt the chocolate in a small saucepan set over the teakettle; add the sugar and half-cup of water, and cook and stir directly over the fire until smooth and glossy; continue cooking, stirring occasionally, about six minutes, then stir into the milk, scalded over hot water; beat with an egg beater about five minutes, and the chocolate is ready to serve.
The framing paragraphs are period nutrition writing; the working recipe is the short one at the end, and it still produces a better drink than cocoa powder stirred into milk. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- The chocolate meant here"One ounce of chocolate" is unsweetened baking chocolate, the plain ground-and-pressed bean of the era, not a sweetened eating bar. Package scoring varies today, some brands in one-ounce squares and some in half-ounce, so weigh it. If you substitute a bittersweet bar, reduce the sugar, since the bar already carries some of its own.
- "Set over the teakettle"An improvised double boiler: the pan rests in the steam from a kettle already at the boil. Any bowl over an inch of simmering water does the same job, and keeps the chocolate from scorching before it has liquefied.
- "Directly over the fire"This means moving the pan onto the actual burner, at moderate heat. The six minutes of cooking the syrup is the hinge of the recipe: it brings the base to the smooth, glossy syrup the text asks for and rounds the flavour. With the period chocolate the author describes, which he says had starch added, it would also have cooked that starch through.
- Scalding the milkScalded means heated to about 180F, when the surface shivers and a rim of bubbles forms at the pan edge. Boiling milk gives it a cooked flavour and a skin. Doing it over hot water, as directed, prevents a scorched bottom.
- The five minutes of beatingAn egg beater is a rotary whisk, and the point is aeration and emulsion, not mixing. A vigorous minute or two with a modern whisk, or a short burst with a stick blender, will raise a comparable foam. A well-frothed chocolate is slower to form a skin as it stands.
- On the starch claimThe statement that starch is added in manufacture reflects some early-1900s products; commercial unsweetened chocolate today is cocoa solids and cocoa butter only. The cooking step still matters for texture and flavour, but not for that reason.
- Atwater's figuresThe composition table is from W. O. Atwater's food analyses and reports calories per pound, not per serving. Read "Food Value" as roughly 2,320 and 2,860 calories per pound respectively, which is a laboratory figure for the dry product rather than the cup of drink.
- YieldTwo cups, as titled, and generously rich ones. The note that cocoa is "too rich for use in conjunction with hearty food" is period dietary opinion, not a caution.
This is American domestic writing of the Boston Cooking School type, where a beverage chapter tends to open with a nutrition table before giving a method. The tables credited to Atwater are the work of Wilbur Olin Atwater, the Connecticut chemist whose calorimetry and food-composition studies for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1890s gave American cookbook writers their first authoritative numbers for protein, fat and "food value." The distinction the author draws between cocoa and chocolate is a real one of the period: chocolate was the whole ground bean, cocoa the same bean with much of its fat pressed out, a process generally traced to the Dutch presses of the early nineteenth century. Because cocoa is drier and disperses more readily, the author is content to send the reader to the package directions; chocolate, fatty and starchy, had to be cooked into a syrup first and then beaten. Whisking chocolate to a foam is itself an old practice, Mesoamerican and later Spanish. That the book bothers to note chocolate is "food as well as drink" suggests it was thought substantial enough to stand in for part of a meal.