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South American Chocolate
Melt 1/2 pound (1 cake) vanilla sweet chocolate over hot water, add slowly 1 cup strong hot coffee and boil 1 minute. Add to 6 cup scalded milk, beat until a thick froth forms on top, and leave over hot water 10 Minutes. Serve with Whipped cream sweetened and flavored, or chill and serve in tall glasses with Cracked Ice
A chocolate-coffee drink built on a half-pound bar of sweetened chocolate, meant to be served hot with whipped cream or cold over ice. A few of its assumptions no longer hold.
- "1 cake" of vanilla sweet chocolateThe recipe itself equates the cake with the weight, so here one cake is 8 oz. The nearest current equivalent is roughly a sweet or semisweet eating chocolate; if you use plain semisweet, expect to add sugar to taste and a little vanilla, since "vanilla sweet" chocolate was sweeter and more perfumed than baking chocolate.
- Melt over hot water, not direct heatThe double boiler is not decoration. Chocolate scorches easily if overheated, which is why the rest of the method keeps things gentle apart from the one deliberate minute of boiling.
- That one minute of boilingBoiling the chocolate with the coffee probably helps the sugar dissolve and the cocoa solids disperse into a smooth syrup. Stir while it boils and stop at the minute.
- Scalded milkScalding meant heating to just below boiling, about 180F, with a ring of bubbles at the edge. With pasteurized milk it is no longer needed for keeping quality, but hot milk blends with the syrup without curdling or streaking, so heat it anyway. Do not let it boil.
- Beating for frothA whisk works; a stick blender works faster and gives a deeper foam. The froth is the point of the drink, and in the Latin American tradition it was raised with a wooden molinillo twirled between the palms.
- The 10 minutes over hot waterThis is a rest, not further cooking. It lets the chocolate finish dissolving and the flavor settle. Keep the water below a simmer so the milk does not catch on the pan.
- YieldAbout 7 cups of finished chocolate, which is 8 to 10 small cups hot, or 6 tall glasses over cracked ice. Chilled, it thickens and wants a brisk re-whisk before pouring.
- Coffee strength"Strong" here means a heavily brewed household cup rather than espresso. A cup of robust drip, or a double shot let down with hot water, both work; straight espresso will overwhelm the chocolate.
Chocolate flavored with coffee and whipped to a froth appears in American cookbooks of the period under vaguely geographic names -- Spanish, Mexican, Brazilian, South American. The frothing itself belongs to the Americas: pre-Columbian Mesoamerican chocolate was aerated by pouring from vessel to vessel, and the molinillo, a later Spanish-colonial tool, carried the same habit forward. What is characteristic of this book's period is the framing: a single recipe expected to serve either hot in cups with sweetened whipped cream or cold in tall glasses over cracked ice.