Cocoa
2 cups boiling water. 2 cups milk. 2 tablespoons cocoa. 1-3 cup sugar. Put milk on fire, leaving enough to moisten cocoa. Add cocoa to milk with sugar. Pour into this the boiling water.
A plain 1920s cocoa built on the sound principle of making a paste first. Two things need translating: the fraction and the order of operations.
- "1-3 cup sugar"This is the book's typesetting for one-third cup, not one to three cups. That is still sweet by current taste for four servings; 2 to 3 tablespoons gives a drink most people prefer today.
- What "cocoa" meantUnsweetened natural cocoa powder, the acidic American style. Dutch-process cocoa works but is mellower and darker; do not substitute drinking chocolate or a sweetened mix, which would throw the sugar out.
- The hinge: the pasteHold back a few tablespoons of the cold milk, stir it into the cocoa and sugar to a smooth slurry with no dry lumps, then proceed. Cocoa dumped into hot liquid clumps and will not disperse afterwards.
- Why boiling water at the endThe very hot addition was held to cook the starch in the cocoa and bring out its flavour. The recipe stops at the pour; if you wish, keep the pan over heat briefly so the mixture stays just below a simmer.
- Do not boil the milk"Put milk on fire" means heat it, not boil it. Milk brought to a rolling boil skins over and scorches on the bottom of the pan; hold it at steaming.
- YieldAbout one quart, or four 8-ounce cups. Whisk hard before pouring to raise a little foam and to keep the cocoa in suspension.
Mrs. Wilson wrote for Philadelphia newspaper readers and wartime household bulletins, and the half-water, half-milk proportion stretches the milk while keeping the drink rich enough to satisfy. Cocoa powder itself is a nineteenth-century product — the pressing of cocoa butter out of ground beans to leave a fine, mixable powder is generally credited to the Van Houten firm in the Netherlands — and by 1900 tinned cocoa was cheap and widely sold, and was promoted as more wholesome for children than coffee or tea. The insistence on moistening the powder before adding hot liquid is common in cookbooks of the period.