Chocolate Sausage

This is an uncooked confection in the family of chocolate salami, shaped as a roll and sliced into coins. As written it cannot be recommended, and the reason is the egg.

• The raw egg is the problemA slightly beaten whole egg goes into chocolate melted over hot water, which never approaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Nothing later in the method cooks it, and there is no acid or alcohol in the mixture to help.
• Then it sits outThe roll is held 24 hours in a "cool dry place" — in the period that likely meant a larder rather than a refrigerator. An uncooked egg mixture held for a day at cellar or room temperature is the step that takes this from a small risk to an avoidable one. If you want a chocolate salami, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg or no egg at all.
• Bar sweet chocolate"Sweet chocolate" of this era is a sweetened dark eating chocolate, lower in cacao and sweeter than modern bittersweet, though the proportion varied by maker. It is not unsweetened baking chocolate, and substituting the latter would make the mixture harsh and stiff.
• Powdered sugarPowdered sugar here is broadly what would now be sold as confectioners' sugar, though period grinds varied and were often coarser. A cup weighs about 4 oz.
• Blanched almondsBlanching means the skins have been slipped off after a brief soak in hot water. "Cut fine" here means chopped with a knife, not ground — the pieces are meant to read as the fat specks in a sausage when the roll is sliced.
• YieldA quarter pound of chocolate plus a cup of sugar, with the nuts and egg, makes a roll of about 12 oz, which would slice into perhaps 30 thin coins — a plate of sweets rather than a dessert in itself.