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Plain Cocoa
INGREDIENTS. 4 teaspoonfuls of cocoa.
1 cup of boiling water. 4 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
1 cup of hot milk.
Whipped cream, if desired.
Method. - Mix the cocoa and sugar, pour over the boiling water, and when boiling again add the hot milk; beat the whipped cream into the hot cocoa, or serve a spoonful upon the top of each cup.
A two-cup drinking cocoa built on the old cocoa-and-sugar paste method, which still gives a smoother cup than dumping powder into hot milk.
- The hinge: boil the cocoa with the water firstCocoa powder carries starch and cocoa solids that need actual boiling water, and a moment of simmering, to hydrate and disperse. Mixing it dry with the sugar first prevents lumps; adding the milk only afterward keeps the milk from scorching or catching on the pan.
- What "cocoa" means hereUnsweetened cocoa powder, not a sweetened drinking mix and not a chocolate bar. Either natural or Dutch-process works; Dutch-process is darker and less sharp, natural cocoa sharper and more acidic.
- StrengthFour teaspoons of cocoa to two cups of liquid is mild by current taste, and the same amount of sugar is restrained. A tablespoon of cocoa per cup, with sugar to match, gives a cup most people would now recognize as hot chocolate.
- YieldTwo cups of liquid, so two small cups or one generous mug. The recipe's own phrase "each cup" implies it was portioned into cups.
- Don't hard-boil the milk"When boiling again add the hot milk" means the cocoa-and-water base boils, not the finished drink. Bring the milk to steaming separately and combine off a hard boil; a rolling boil after the milk goes in gives a skin and a cooked-milk flavor.
- The whipped cream, two waysBeaten into the hot cocoa it collapses into richness and a little froth, which is the point of that version. Spooned on top it stays a distinct cap; sweeten it barely or not at all, since the drink is already sugared.
- Serve at onceCocoa made this way separates as it stands, the solids settling out. Whisk again just before pouring, or keep it over the lowest heat and stir.
Drinking cocoa of this kind depends on defatted cocoa powder, which is generally traced to the Dutch press method of the early nineteenth century; before that, chocolate was drunk as a fatty, gritty emulsion whipped with a molinillo. By the 1890s pressed cocoa was cheap, shelf-stable and heavily advertised in America, and it moved chocolate out of the category of an occasion and into the everyday breakfast and luncheon table. That is why a recipe this plain earns a place at all: cocoa was a standard hot drink for light, informal meals, poured for luncheons, afternoon teas and the late chafing-dish suppers that were a fashionable amusement in the years around 1900. The instruction to boil the powder with water before adding milk survives in serious cocoa recipes still.