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Plain Chocolate
4 cups milk 2 ounces of chocolate 1/8 tablespoon cornstarch 3 tablespoons sugar Follow the directions in preceding recipe.
A drinking chocolate from the era when "chocolate" on a beverage page meant a bar of unsweetened cake chocolate melted into milk, not powdered cocoa. The instructions were carried over from the recipe above it in the book, so the method has to be reconstructed.
- The missing methodA plausible reconstruction for a milk chocolate beverage: chop the chocolate, melt it in a small pan with the sugar, the cornstarch and about half a cup of the milk, stirring to a smooth paste over low heat, then whisk in the remaining milk and heat until steaming. Do not let it boil hard or the milk will skin and scorch.
- What kind of chocolateMost likely two ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in the period as cake or cooking chocolate; the added sugar points that way. Modern unsweetened bars are a direct substitute. If you use a sweetened dark bar, cut the sugar back sharply or the result is cloying.
- The cornstarch measure"1/8 tablespoon" is an unusual way to write it; taken literally it is a scant half teaspoon. Read it as a stabiliser, not a thickener — enough to help keep the cocoa butter in suspension so the drink does not separate in the cup.
- SweetnessThree tablespoons across four cups is restrained by current taste, a little over two teaspoons per cup. Taste before serving and adjust rather than doubling blindly.
- FrothMany nineteenth and early twentieth century directions end with beating the finished chocolate with a whisk or chocolate mill until foamy. This is not decoration; it lightens a drink that is otherwise heavy with cocoa butter.
- YieldAbout four cups of finished chocolate, or three generous mugs. Reheat gently and re-whisk if it stands, as the starch and fat will settle.
The distinction this page assumes has since collapsed: to a cook of the early 1900s, "cocoa" generally meant the defatted powder associated with Van Houten's press process and sold in tins, while "chocolate" meant solid cake chocolate with all its cocoa butter intact, which is richer, harder to disperse in milk, and prone to separating — hence the pinch of cornstarch. The habit of whipping the finished drink to a froth is often traced to the Spanish colonial molinillo, the turned wooden mill twirled between the palms.