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Chocolate Sauce for Ice Cream
Put over the fire and cook to a thick sirup two cupfuls sugar, one cupful of milk, two tablespoons grated chocolate, or the same amount of cocoa and one teaspoonful of butter.
A three-minute stovetop sauce of the fudge type, thickened by boiling sugar and milk rather than by starch or cream. Its whole character depends on how far you take the syrup.
- The hinge: stop early"Thick sirup" here probably corresponds to somewhere around 220-225F on a candy thermometer, a little above boiling water; the recipe itself gives no test. Taken to soft-ball (234-238F) it will set into fudge in the jug and seize on cold ice cream.
- Grated chocolateThis usually meant a hard block of chocolate, most often unsweetened baking chocolate, put across a grater. Two tablespoons of gratings is only about half an ounce, which with two cups of sugar gives a pale, very sweet sauce. An ounce and a half to two ounces of chopped unsweetened chocolate makes it taste like chocolate to a modern palate.
- Cocoa is not a straight swapThe recipe offers cocoa as an equal substitute. Cocoa powder is far drier and will thicken the syrup on contact, so sift it into the sugar before the milk goes in, or it will stay lumpy.
- ScorchingSugar and milk boiled together catch on the bottom quickly. Use a heavy saucepan, keep a spoon moving, and expect the sauce to darken slightly as the milk sugars brown " that browning is part of the flavour, but a burnt patch is not.
- Add the butter lastThe recipe boils it in with the rest, but stirring the teaspoon of butter in off the heat gives a glossier finish.
- Yield and keepingRoughly a cup and a half to two cups, enough for six to eight servings. It should keep about a week refrigerated and sets firm when cold; warm it gently with a spoonful of milk to bring it back to pouring consistency.
Mary A. Wilson's cook book belongs to the moment just after the First World War when American home cooking was being systematised into measured cupfuls and standardised procedures. A sauce like this one reflects the way chocolate then reached the home cook: as a hard unsweetened block to be grated, with cocoa powder offered as the cheaper, more shelf-stable alternative. The sugar-forward proportions are typical of the period, and boiling sugar down to a syrup was a common way to get body into a sauce without cream or cornstarch.