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Chocolate Syrup
Dissolve one half pound of chocolate in two and one half quarts of water. Add eight and one half pounds of granulated sugar, and when dissolved boil for five minutes. Strain while hot. When cold add four tablespoonfuls of vanilla and bottle.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a household one: it makes something over a gallon of heavy chocolate syrup, meant to be measured by the ounce into glasses of soda water or milk. Scale it down before you start.
- The chocolate meant hereIn fountain and confectionery books of this era "chocolate" without qualification generally means unsweetened block chocolate rather than cocoa powder or eating chocolate. Plain 100% baking chocolate is the safest reading; the recipe's sugar is heavy enough that it appears to assume the chocolate carries none.
- Scale it downOne-eighth of the recipe gives 1 oz chocolate, 1 1/4 cups water, about 17 oz (2 1/3 cups) granulated sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, which yields roughly a pint and a quarter. The full batch runs to something over a gallon.
- The hinge: get the sugar fully dissolved before the boilAt 8 1/2 lb of sugar to 2 1/2 quarts of water this is a very heavy syrup. Any undissolved grain left on the side of the pan can seed crystallization in the bottle, so wash the sides down with a wet brush and do not begin timing the five minutes until the liquid is clear.
- Melt the chocolate into a little of the water first"Dissolve" is loose — chocolate does not dissolve. Grate or chop it and work it smooth with a cup of the warm water into a paste, then add the rest, or you will be straining out lumps that took the cocoa solids with them.
- Strain while hot means itCold, this syrup is thick enough to resist a sieve. Pour it through a fine strainer or a double layer of cheesecloth straight off the heat to catch cocoa grit and any undispersed cocoa butter.
- Vanilla goes in cold for a reasonVanilla extract is alcohol-based and its aromatics flash off in hot syrup. Four tablespoons in the full batch is a bit over a teaspoon per pint of finished syrup.
- Bottling and keepingThe original assumes a fountain that would empty the bottles within days. Sugar concentration this high is inhospitable to microbes, but the syrup is not sterile or sealed — refrigerate it, and expect the cocoa solids to settle so it needs shaking.
- ServingFigure 1 to 1 1/2 fl oz of syrup to a 10 oz glass of soda water, or to a glass of cold milk. It is also a serviceable syrup for ice cream.
Books like this one belong to the American soda fountain trade, which had grown into a serious commercial kitchen with its own literature of syrups, phosphates, and "bracers." The water wagon was the temperance figure of speech o have given up drink — and the fountain's promise was that it could supply everything the bar did. Chocolate syrup was the fountain's workhorse: cheap, shelf-stable because of its sugar load, and the base for chocolate soda, chocolate milk and the ice-cream sodas that made the counter's reputation. The scale here, better than eight pounds of sugar at a time, is the giveaway that the intended reader stood behind a marble counter rather than a home range.