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Ninth Day: Chocolate
No. 111-CHOCOLATE MERINGUE.
Dissolve three tablespoonfuls corn-starch in two tablespoonfuls milk; break up two ounces of sweetened chocolate in a tin basin over boiling water, and to it add gradually the rest of a pint of milk; stir until perfectly smooth, and when it is scalding, pour in the starch and stir till it thickens; then add the yolks of three eggs beaten with two large tablespoonfuls sugar, and stir until much thicker than soft custard, and when somewhat cooled, add one teaspoonful vanilla, and pour it into a glass dish. Just before serving (when it must be perfectly cold), cover it with a meringue made of the whites of the eggs beaten stiff, with four tablespoonfuls sugar.
No. 112-CHOCOLATE BLANC-MANGE.
Make exactly as in recipe No. 109, with the addition of four heaping tablespoonfuls grated chocolate rubbed smooth in a little milk; this is to be added as soon as the gelatine is perfectly dissolved.
No. 113-CORN STARCH BLANC-MANGE.
Heat one quart milk to boiling, then stir in four tablespoonfuls corn starch wet in a little cold water, with one saltspoon salt; boil five minutes, then add one small cup sugar, beaten with the yolk, of three eggs; boil two minutes longer, stirring all the while; take from the fire and stir in the whites. Wet the mould with cold water. Many people prefer this without the eggs. Farina blancmange may be made in the same way, but boiled fifteen minutes instead of five before the eggs are added.
No. 114 TAPIOCA BLANC-MANGE.
Soak one-half pound tapioca in a cup of cold water for four hours. Heat one pint rich milk and stir the tapioca into it. When it is quite dissolved, add threequarters of a cup sugar and a pinch of salt. Boil slowly fifteen minutes, stirring all the time; take from the fire and beat till nearly cold, then add two teaspoonfuls of vanilla or bitter almonds, and pour into a mould dipped in cold water.
No. 115-CHOCOLATE CREAM.
Mix together according to previous directions two ounces chocolate, three eggs, a quarter of a pound sugar and a pint of milk. Stir over boiling water until smooth and creamy. Toast slices of any light, common cake, and pour the hot cream over them. "We'll take the corn-starch blanc-mange for to-morrow," said Aunt Jane, "but we must find something for to-day's dessert. What shall it be?" "Tip-top pudding," said Grace; "such as Rhoda makes." "Can't we have our Queen of Puddings, mamma?" said Amy. "You extravagant little things! You want nothing but the richest and most delicate dishes that can be got up! I'm disposed to try something plain to-day. But I'll give you the receipts for the others too."
A run of five chocolate and starch desserts from a children's cookery lesson, all built on the same technique: a starch or gelatine thickener carried in scalded milk. Two of them raise problems a modern cook cannot cook around, so read the first two points before anything else.
- Bitter almonds in No. 114The tapioca blanc-mange offers "two teaspoonfuls of vanilla or bitter almonds" as flavouring. Bitter almonds and the essence distilled from them contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide on contact with moisture and enzymes; the nineteenth-century essence was a recognised poison sold freely and was implicated in fatal accidents, and two teaspoons is not a trace amount. Unprocessed bitter almonds are not legally sold in the United States today. Use a current recipe rather than attempting a substitution here.
- The raw meringue on No. 111The meringue in the chocolate meringue is beaten whites and sugar spread over a cold custard "just before serving" and never baked, browned or heated. Raw white sitting on a chilled dessert is a salmonella risk that no amount of chilling addresses, and the recipe gives no oven step at all. A modern published recipe using pasteurised whites or a cooked Italian meringue is the way to get this dish.
- No. 112 depends on a recipe not printed hereThe chocolate blanc-mange is only an amendment to No. 109, the gelatine blanc-mange, which appears earlier in the book. Without it you have no milk quantity, no gelatine quantity and no setting time.
- Saltspoon and cupA saltspoon is generally reckoned a quarter teaspoon. Nineteenth-century cups were often smaller than the modern eight-ounce measure, so err small with "one small cup" of sugar.
- "Sweetened chocolate"Nineteenth-century sweet chocolate was coarser than modern eating chocolate and its sugar content is uncertain; semisweet baking chocolate is the nearest thing. "Grated chocolate" in No. 112 reflects chocolate sold in hard cakes to be grated, not in chips.
- Tin basin over boiling waterA double boiler, or a metal bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Chocolate and egg custards scorch and curdle readily over direct heat, which is why Nos. 111 and 115 specify it.
- TapiocaHalf a pound of pearl tapioca soaked four hours and then boiled fifteen minutes is the old large-pearl product. Instant or minute tapioca behaves entirely differently and will turn to paste on this schedule.
- FarinaFarina is milled from wheat middlings, sold now as Cream of Wheat or similar. It needs longer cooking than corn starch, hence fifteen minutes rather than five; taste for grittiness rather than trusting the clock.
- YieldNo. 113 uses a quart of milk and No. 114 a pint; both are turned out of a mould wetted with cold water, while No. 111 is poured into a glass dish.
Six Little Cooks belongs to a nineteenth-century genre of instructional cookbooks framed as stories, in which an aunt or mother teaches a circle of children to cook while the reader learns alongside them; the chatter about "Tip-top pudding" and "Queen of Puddings" at the end of the lesson is doing the same work as the numbered receipts above it. The desserts themselves mark a specific moment in American kitchens. Blanc-mange began as a medieval European dish of pounded almonds and capon, thickened with rice, and by the eighteenth century had become a sweet almond-milk jelly set with isinglass or calf's-foot gelatine. What made it a weeknight dessert for a household like this one was the commercial manufacture of cornstarch, which spread rapidly in the United States after the middle of the century and let a cook thicken a quart of milk in five minutes without gelatine at all. Chocolate arrived in the same domestic register: sold in hard sweetened cakes to be grated or broken and melted with milk, it was still enough of a treat that an entire day of the girls' course could be given over to it.