Cocoa
Allow one teaspoon of cocoa for each cup desired.
Mix with the same quantity of sugar in a dry agate pan. Add one cup of boiling water for each teaspoon of Blend thoroughly and bring to a boil. Add a pinch of Larkin Table Salt, one-fourth teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract for every two teaspoons of cocoa. Take from fire and add milk or cream.
A water-based cocoa syrup finished with milk, written to sell three products from the same catalogue. The technique is sound: boiling the cocoa with water first cooks out the raw starch taste that plagues cocoa stirred straight into hot milk.
- The hinge: boil the pasteMixing cocoa and sugar dry, then boiling with the water, hydrates and cooks the starch in the cocoa. Skip it and the drink tastes chalky and settles in the cup.
- Agate panAgateware was speckled enamel over a steel or iron body. Any non-reactive pan will do.
- CocoaThis means plain unsweetened cocoa powder, not a modern sweetened drinking-chocolate mix. American house-brand cocoas of the period were commonly natural (non-alkalised), slightly more acidic and fruitier than Dutch-process, though Larkin's own product cannot be confirmed either way.
- StrengthOne level teaspoon of cocoa and one of sugar per cup is thin by present-day taste. Two to three teaspoons of each per cup gives what most people now expect from a cup of cocoa.
- Liquid arithmeticA full cup of boiling water per teaspoon of cocoa, then milk on top, yields well over a cup per serving. Use half a cup of water and half a cup of milk if you want a proper cupful, or treat the boiled mixture as a concentrate.
- Milk off the heatAdding the milk after the pan leaves the fire keeps it from scalding or forming a skin. If you want it hotter, warm the milk separately rather than boiling it into the cocoa.
- Vanilla and saltA quarter teaspoon of extract per two teaspoons of cocoa is a heavy hand by modern measure; an eighth of a teaspoon per two cups is plenty. Add vanilla at the end, since boiling drives off the aroma. The pinch of salt is not optional -- it sharpens the chocolate.
- Brand namesLarkin salt and vanilla were simply the house products. Ordinary table salt and pure vanilla extract are direct substitutes.
The Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, began as a soap manufacturer in the 1870s and grew into one of the great American mail-order houses, selling groceries, extracts, furniture and household goods direct to customers who ordered by club and earned premiums. Little cookbooks like this one were part of that machinery: recipes written so that the ingredient list doubled as an order form, which is why the salt and the vanilla arrive here with brand names attached and the cocoa does not need one. The method itself appears to have been usual for the period -- domestic-science writers of the 1890s and 1900s insisted that cocoa be boiled with water before milk was added, on the grounds that the starch needed cooking, and cocoa was promoted through those decades as a wholesome, temperate drink suitable for children and invalids as well as breakfast tables.