Cocoa Cream
2 tablespoons granulated gelatine ½ cup cold water 2 egg yolks 2 egg whites ½ cup cocoa ¼ inch stick cinnamon 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup heavy cream 1 teaspoon salt Mix cocoa, sugar, yolks of eggs; add light cream and cinnamon, and cook in double boiler until mixture begins to thicken. Add gelatine which has been soaked in cold water, and stir until dissolved.
Add salt, vanilla, and whites of eggs beaten until stiff; when well blended, add heavy cream beaten until thick with Dover egg beater. Mold, chill; and serve with cream.
A gelatine-set chocolate Bavarian cream, written in the compressed style of a manufacturer's cookbook — the ingredient list and the method do not quite agree, so read both before starting.
- The list is incompleteSugar and light cream appear in the method but not in the ingredient list, so the cook has to supply both amounts. Roughly ⅔ cup sugar and 1 cup light cream (or whole milk) is a workable reconstruction for a mixture of this size, but the original quantities are unknown.
- The salt is almost certainly a misprintThe salt looks excessive -- A full teaspoon in a dessert of roughly a quart is far more than comparable recipes call for, and may well be a misprint. A quarter teaspoon does what the seasoning is meant to do here, which is sharpen the cocoa.
- Granulated gelatineTwo tablespoons is nearly three envelopes of modern unflavoured gelatine (an envelope runs about 2¼ teaspoons), which gives a firm, sliceable mold rather than a spoonable mousse. Soften it in the half cup of cold water before it goes into the hot custard, and stir off the heat until no grains remain.
- CocoaAmerican cocoas of this period were generally natural (non-alkalised), more acidic and more sharply flavoured than Dutch-process. Either works; Dutch-process gives a darker, rounder result with less bite.
- Cooking the custardThe double boiler is not optional. The mixture wants to reach about 170–175F and coat a spoon; past that the yolks curdle and no amount of beating brings them back.
- Raw whitesThe beaten whites go in after the custard leaves the heat and are never cooked. If that matters for who is eating it, use pasteurised whites or a hot-sugar-syrup meringue instead.
- The cinnamon stickFour inches of stick cinnamon infuses the hot custard and is then fished out — it is not ground into the mixture. Remove it before the gelatine goes in.
- Dover egg beaterA rotary hand beater. Whip the heavy cream only to soft, thickened peaks; stiff cream folded into a setting gelatine base gives a grainy texture.
- Molding and yieldRinse the mold with cold water before filling so it releases cleanly. Chill at least four hours, ideally overnight. Serves six to eight.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), compiled by Maria Willett Howard, was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate and cocoa manufacturer, and like the Baker's and Hershey's books of the same decade it exists to put the company's product into as many recipes as the household repertoire will bear. Cocoa Cream belongs to the family of Bavarian creams — set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream — that dominated American dessert chapters from the 1890s onward, once commercially granulated gelatine replaced the tedious business of boiling down calves' feet and made a molded cream a weeknight possibility rather than a project. The cinnamon stick steeped in the chocolate custard is an older touch, a survival of the long European habit of spicing drinking chocolate.