Chocolate
1/2 gal. milk. 2 cups sugar. 1/2 lb. Baker's chocolate. Put milk on in double boiler, with chocolate and sugar. Let thoroughly blend. It will be more delightful if stands an hour before serving. Add vanilla if liked. Some use yolks, but it is not necessary to thicken it; after standing it will be thick enough. Serve with whipped cream.
A party-scale drinking chocolate built on unsweetened baking chocolate rather than cocoa powder. It is very rich and, by current taste, very sweet.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a gallon of milk is 8 cups; half a pound of chocolate is 8 ounces. The batch yields roughly ten to twelve small cups.
- What "Baker's chocolate" meansWalter Baker & Co.'s unsweetened baking chocolate, sold in half-pound cakes scored into eight one-ounce squares. Use plain unsweetened baking chocolate, not semisweet chips and not cocoa powder, or the balance of fat and sugar changes entirely.
- SugarTwo cups of sugar against 8 ounces of unsweetened chocolate is period sweetness. Starting with half that and tasting is reasonable; the sugar is doing nothing structural here.
- Chop the chocolate firstSolid squares dropped into cold milk melt unevenly and leave grainy flecks. Chop or grate the chocolate, and stir until the mixture is glossy and smooth with no dark specks clinging to the spoon.
- Why the double boilerMilk with sugar and cocoa solids scorches readily over direct heat, and scorched chocolate cannot be rescued. Keep the water below the pan at a bare simmer and do not let the mixture boil.
- The standing hourThe recipe says it will be thick enough after standing, without egg yolk. Refrigerate during the rest rather than leaving sweetened milk on the stove, then reheat gently over water before serving.
- If you use the yolksThe recipe treats them as optional, and they are. Should you add them, temper them with a ladle of the hot chocolate and hold the pan below a simmer, or the custard will curdle.
- ServingThe recipe does not say whether the whipped cream is sweetened; the drink already carries plenty of sugar. Add the optional vanilla off the heat at the end.
Drinking chocolate of this kind — melted block chocolate cooked into milk, not cocoa powder whisked into water — was the older and richer form. The brand named in the recipe points to Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, whose chocolate works are generally traced to a mill begun in 1765 by John Hannon and Dr. James Baker; by 1920 "Baker's chocolate" functioned in American cookbooks almost as a generic term for unsweetened baking chocolate, which is why the recipe gives a weight and no further description. The casual note that "some use yolks, but it is not necessary" is a small piece of period argument: the older European tradition thickened chocolate with egg, and here the writer is content to let time and the cocoa solids do the work instead.