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Foamy Chocolate
Cook until smooth, four ounces of chocolate, four tablespoonfuls of sugar, a saltspoonful of salt, and four tablespoonfuls of boiling water. Stir constantly for about ten minutes, then add two and one half quarts of scalded milk and beat until frothy with an egg beater. Flavor with a teaspoonful of vanilla and a little cinnamon. Serve with a spoonful of whipped cream in each cup.
A large-format hot chocolate: a cooked chocolate paste thinned with scalded milk and whipped to a froth. The measurements are for a party, not for two.
- The chocolate meant here"Chocolate" in a book of this date means unsweetened baking chocolate sold in cakes, roughly 4 squares to 4 ounces. Cocoa powder is not a substitute at the same weight; if you use a modern bittersweet bar the added sugar will throw the balance off.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. It is there to sharpen the chocolate, not to season.
- Sugar is low by current tasteFour tablespoons across two and a half quarts is about a teaspoon of sugar per cup, which reads as very dark to a modern palate. Taste the paste before the milk goes in and adjust then, while it is still easy to dissolve.
- Making the pasteMelt the chocolate with the sugar, salt and boiling water over low heat or in a double boiler. The ten minutes of constant stirring smooths and thickens the mixture, which is what gives the finished drink body rather than grittiness.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to about 180F, just as bubbles form at the edge and before a full boil. Milk boiled hard will skin and can catch on the pan bottom.
- Beating frothyThe rotary egg beater of the period is doing the work of an immersion blender or a milk frother. Beat off the heat or the foam will collapse as it goes back on the burner.
- YieldTwo and a half quarts of milk plus the paste gives about ten cups, so ten to twelve servings. Halve the whole thing for a household of four.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of American beverage books that appeared around national Prohibition, when publishers found a ready market for anything a hostess could pour that was not alcohol. Chocolate and cocoa appear among those pages, partly because they were cheap and familiar and partly because a hot drink served in cups with whipped cream gave a party the shape of a party. The technique here, cooking the chocolate with sugar and a little water into a smooth paste before the milk goes in, is much older than the book and traces back to the way chocolate was handled when it arrived in Europe as a pressed cake rather than a powder; the frothing with a beater does the same work as the Mexican molinillo, the turned wooden whisk rolled between the palms to raise foam on the surface.