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Marshmallow Chocolate
Grate two and one half squares of vanilla chocolate and mix with enough boiling water to make a thin paste. Add this to one quart of scalded milk with enough sugar to sweeten, and a pinch of salt. Beat with an egg beater for a few minutes. Place two marshmallows in each cup, and pour the hot chocolate over them.
A four-ingredient drink whose only real variable is the chocolate itself, which is not quite the product the original writer had in hand.
- "Vanilla chocolate"This meant a sweetened eating chocolate flavored with vanilla, not today's unsweetened baking squares. If you use unsweetened chocolate you will need considerably more sugar; if you use a bar of 55-70% dark, cut the added sugar back sharply and taste before serving.
- SquaresChocolate cakes of the period were commonly scored into one-ounce squares, so two and a half squares is likely around 2.5 oz for a quart of milk, though sizes varied by maker. Chopping fine with a knife works as well as grating and is faster.
- Scalded milkBring the milk to about 180F, when a rim of bubbles forms at the edge and steam rises, then stop. Boiled milk throws a skin and takes on a cooked flavor that shows through the chocolate.
- The pasteAdding a little boiling water to the grated chocolate first is the hinge of the recipe. It disperses the cocoa solids so they do not clump when they hit the milk; a couple of tablespoons is enough, and it should be smooth before it goes into the pot.
- "Beat with an egg beater"A rotary beater aerates the drink and gives it a light foam. A whisk does the job; an immersion blender does it better.
- MarshmallowsMarshmallows of the period were starch-moulded rather than extruded like the modern kind, and were probably softer. Standard supermarket marshmallows will need a moment in the hot liquid; miniatures dissolve faster if you want them to disappear into the foam.
- YieldA quart of milk plus the chocolate gives roughly four to five cups, depending on cup size.
Hot chocolate was a respectable parlor and nursery drink, and it could be dressed up cheaply. The marshmallows are the period detail. Commercial marshmallow candy, made with gelatin and corn syrup rather than the marsh mallow root that gave the confection its name, had become an inexpensive grocery item in the United States by the early twentieth century, and dropping two in a cup of chocolate was the sort of small flourish that needed no equipment and no skill.