Health Cocoa
1 tablespoon health cocoa 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 cup boiling water 1/2 cup milk A few grains salt A few drops vanilla Mix the cocoa, sugar, and salt. Pour over it the boiling water. Boil two minutes. Add the milk and vanilla and let it come to the scalding point.
A single-serving cup of cocoa made by the old two-stage method: cook the cocoa paste first, add the milk after. Nothing here is difficult, but two details matter.
- "Health cocoa"Most likely plain unsweetened cocoa powder rather than a sweetened or spiced chocolate preparation; the term may also have been a trade or house name. Any modern unsweetened cocoa works; natural (non-alkalized) cocoa is probably closest to what the book assumes.
- Boil the cocoa, not the milkThe two-minute boil with water is the distinctive step. Cocoa contains some starch, and cooking it in water first was held to cook that starch out so the drink did not taste raw.
- Scalding pointAround 180F -- steam rising and a ring of small bubbles at the edge, no rolling boil. Milk boiled hard forms a skin and takes on a cooked flavor.
- Mix dry before wetCocoa, sugar and salt combined dry, then hit with the boiling water, will disperse. Water added to cocoa alone tends to clump.
- Salt and vanilla"a few grains" is a small pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon; "a few drops" of vanilla is only that, three or four drops, far less than 1/8 teaspoon. Both are there to sharpen a very lean cocoa, and the sugar at one teaspoon is far less than a modern palate expects.
- YieldAbout one cup, one serving. Multiply straight up for more; the proportions are one tablespoon cocoa to half a cup each of water and milk.