Home › Desserts › Hot Chocolate Sauce
Hot Chocolate Sauce
One cup of cream Two squares of unsweetened chocolate One-half cup of sugar Blend the sugar and Chocolate, and heat. When melted add the cream, which should be scalded before adding. Flavor with one-half teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract and one-eighth teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt. Serve hot over plain Vanilla Ice-cream.
A three-ingredient chocolate sauce that depends entirely on gentle heat. The instruction that matters is the scalded cream: cold cream hitting melted chocolate is what makes a sauce turn grainy.
- Squares of chocolateA square of unsweetened baking chocolate is one ounce, so this calls for 2 oz total. Chopping it before melting gives a smoother result than dropping in whole squares.
- Blend and heat, carefullySugar and chocolate heated together with no liquid will scorch over direct flame. Use very low heat or a bowl over barely simmering water, and stir constantly until the chocolate is melted; the sugar will stay gritty until the cream goes in.
- Scalded creamScalding means heating to about 180F, until small bubbles ring the edge of the pan, not to a rolling boil. Add it in two or three additions, stirring smooth after each, which keeps the emulsion from breaking.
- Vanilla off the heatAlcohol-based extract flashes off quickly. Stir the half teaspoon in after the pan leaves the burner so the flavor stays in the sauce.
- Larkin brand ingredientsLarkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract and Larkin Table Salt were house-brand goods sold by the company that issued this book. Any pure vanilla extract and fine table salt substitute exactly.
- ConsistencyThis is a thin pouring sauce while hot and will thicken considerably as it cools. Reheat gently and loosen with a spoonful of cream or milk rather than water.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 cups by volume, though the recipe gives no yield or serving count.
Hot fudge and hot chocolate sauces over cold ice cream became a fixture of American soda fountains and home entertaining in the decades either side of 1900, by which time unsweetened baking chocolate in wrapped one-ounce squares was a familiar pantry item. The Larkin references place this in the world of premium-and-club merchandising: the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York, built an enormous mail-order business selling soap and then groceries, extracts, spices and household goods direct to customers, often bundled with furniture or dishes as premiums. Recipe booklets like this one presumably existed to keep the pantry stocked with the company's own vanilla and salt, and the habit of naming the brand in the ingredient line is the tell. The technique itself is older and unchanged: sugar and chocolate melted together, then let down with scalded cream.