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Chocolate Whips
Beat the yolks of three eggs and three tablespoons of sugar until light. Dissolve one heaping tablespoon of grated unsweetened chocolate, one tablespoon of sugar and one tablespoon of hot water; when dissolved, add slowly a pint of milk heated to boiling; pour this hot mixture over the beaten eggs and sugar, and cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until it thickens. When cool flavor with vanilla and place on the ice.
When ready to serve half fill small punch glasses with the custard and heap cream whipped, sweetened and flavored over it.-Amelia Sulzbacher.
A stirred custard thinned with chocolate and served in glasses under whipped cream — closer to a pot de crème than a mousse. The whole thing hinges on the temperature of the custard.
- The critical pointEgg-yolk custard thickens between about 170F and 180F and curdles above roughly 185F. Cook it over water that is steaming but not boiling hard, stir without stopping, and pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon. If it does begin to look grainy, strain it at once through a fine sieve.
- Tempering"Pour this hot mixture over the beaten eggs" means exactly that, and in a thin stream while whisking. Dumping the scalded milk in at once will scramble the yolks before they ever reach the double boiler.
- The chocolateUnsweetened chocolate sold in bars is still available; a heaping tablespoon grated is somewhere around a third to a half ounce, 10-15 g. One tablespoon of hot water will not truly dissolve it — expect a thick paste, which is fine, since the hot milk finishes the job. Cocoa powder is not a direct substitute.
- "Place on the ice"An icebox instruction. Chill the custard thoroughly, three hours or overnight, covered so it does not take on a skin or absorb refrigerator smells.
- SugarThree tablespoons in the yolks plus one with the chocolate is restrained by modern standards, and the whipped cream is sweetened separately. Taste the warm custard and adjust before chilling; sweetness reads lower when cold.
- Vanilla and flavoringAdd the vanilla off the heat, as directed — a teaspoon is about right for a pint of milk. The period "flavored" cream might mean vanilla, sherry or a spoon of rum.
- Glasses and yieldPunch glasses of the period were small, on the order of a few ounces. A pint of milk plus three yolks gives a little over two cups of custard, enough to half-fill a good many such glasses, or to fill four modern ramekins.
- Whipped creamAbout a cup of heavy cream whipped to soft peaks will cover the glasses generously. Whip it shortly before serving; it should be heaped, not piped.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks used "whip" loosely, and this one keeps the two elements separate: a boiled custard below, whipped cream heaped above. It treats its chocolate cautiously — well under an ounce of unsweetened chocolate flavoring a full pint of milk, a proportion that would strike a modern cook as faint. The signature is typical of collections that printed contributions from readers, whose names appear beneath their recipes as a kind of credit. The instruction to "place on the ice" belongs to the era of the ice-delivery wagon and the zinc-lined icebox.