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Ready Chocolate Powder (Cup boiling water cup scalded)
1 cup boiling water 1 cup scalded milk salt Mix two teaspoons Lowney's Always Ready Chocolate Powder with boiling water; boil three minutes, stirring all the time; add scalded milk and cook in double boiler ten minutes; add a few grains of salt and more sugar if needed; beat and serve. This may be made without cooking so long.
A two-cup drinking chocolate built on a branded product that no longer exists. The method — boil the cocoa paste hard before the milk goes in — is worth keeping even if you rebuild the ingredient list.
- The chocolate powderLowney's Always Ready Chocolate Powder was a pre-sweetened cocoa mix sold by the company that published this book. The closest modern stand-in is a sweetened drinking-cocoa powder; if you use unsweetened cocoa, reckon on about 2 tablespoons cocoa plus 2 tablespoons sugar for the two cups of liquid here.
- Two teaspoons is not enoughTwo teaspoons of any modern cocoa in two cups of liquid gives a thin, pale drink. The original powder was presumably denser and stronger than what is on shelves now; scale up to taste rather than trusting the figure.
- Boil the paste firstThe three-minute hard boil with water, stirring throughout, is the hinge. It hydrates the cocoa solids and any starch in the mix, which is what keeps the finished drink from tasting raw and dusty or settling out in the cup.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to about 180F, until it steams and shows a ring of bubbles at the edge, without letting it boil. Adding it hot means the double-boiler stage warms through rather than starting from cold.
- The double boilerTen minutes over simmering water is insurance against scorching milk and cocoa on direct heat. If you are watching the pan and stirring, five minutes on low direct heat does the same job — the recipe's own closing line concedes the long cooking is optional.
- Salt and the final beatingA few grains of salt sharpens the chocolate rather than seasoning it. The recipe's instruction to beat before serving raises a foam on the cup.
- YieldTwo cups of liquid, so two modest servings or one generous one.
- Filed oddlyThis appears among the frozen dishes, though nothing in it is frozen.
Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard and published in 1907 for the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer — one of a large family of turn-of-the-century cookbooks issued by food companies to teach cooks to use a specific product. Recipes like this one name the brand directly, and chocolate and cocoa run through the book from soups to ices. The "Always Ready" name points to convenience: a powder that spared the cook the shaving and grating that block chocolate demanded. Cooking chocolate with water first and finishing it with milk and a vigorous beating for froth is older than the convenience product, and appears in earlier Spanish and colonial chocolate practice.