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Chocolate and Celery
Mix two tablespoonfuls of chocolate paste with two tablespoonfuls of cream. Add hot water and season with celery salt. Put a spoonful of whipped cream on top.
A single cup of hot chocolate with a savoury edge, written for a household that already had a jar of chocolate paste standing by. The quantities assume a fountain-style glass or a large cup, and the celery salt is a seasoning accent rather than a flavour in its own right.
- Chocolate pasteIn books of this period the term usually covers a cooked mixture of grated unsweetened chocolate, sugar and a little water, boiled thick and kept in a jar, though formulations vary. A thick chocolate syrup or a loose ganache stands in directly; if you use cocoa powder instead, try roughly a tablespoon of cocoa plus a tablespoon of sugar per two tablespoons of paste, and blend it to a smooth slurry with the cream before any water goes in.
- Celery salt is saltThe hinge of the drink. An eighth of a teaspoon is plenty in a single cup; a full pinch beyond that and it reads as broth rather than chocolate. Add it at the end, taste, and stop early.
- How much hot waterUnstated, and genuinely ambiguous. Working backwards from the four tablespoons of base, six to eight ounces gives a drink of ordinary hot-chocolate strength; less if you want it closer to a demitasse.
- Order of operationsSlack the paste with the cream first and only then pour in the hot water, whisking. Hot water hitting cold paste directly leaves grit at the bottom of the cup.
- Hot, not boilingWater just off the boil is right. Boiling water poured onto a cream-and-chocolate base can break the emulsion and leave a thin, speckled drink.
- The cream on topWhip it barely to soft peaks and leave it unsweetened. It is there to melt down into the surface and soften the salt, not to sit up as a dessert garnish.
- YieldOne cup. The proportions scale cleanly, though the celery salt should be measured per serving rather than multiplied blind.
Celery was fashionable at the time in a way that is easy to forget: celery salt, celery tonic and celery soda were standard soda-fountain items in the 1900s and 1910s, and the savoury-sweet pairing here would have struck a contemporary reader as modern rather than strange. The reliance on a pre-made chocolate paste is the other period marker. Before dependable instant cocoa mixes, a cook kept a jar of cooked chocolate syrup in the pantry precisely so a hot drink could be assembled in a minute, which is why the recipe can be four lines long and still assume competence.