Chocolate
1 quart of milk and water. 1/2 ounce of chocolate.
Boil the milk and water in a small, bright saucepan. Scrape down an ounce as marked on the half pound cakes of common chocolate, throw it in an beat with a wire egg whisk about one minute, or till the chocolate is all dissolved.
A working drink recipe from a professional kitchen, written in the shorthand of a cook who expected to make it fifty times a day. Two details need attention before you start: the quantity of chocolate contradicts itself, and there is no sugar.
- The chocolate quantity is contradictoryThe heading calls for half an ounce; the method says scrape down an ounce. The half-pound cakes of the period were scored into ounce divisions, so the instruction to scrape "an ounce as marked" is the more reliable of the two. An ounce to a quart is still thin by modern taste.
- "Common chocolate"Almost certainly plain cake chocolate: ground roasted nibs pressed into a block, without added sugar. The nearest modern equivalent is 100% unsweetened baking chocolate rather than a dark eating bar, which already contains sugar and extra cocoa butter.
- No sugar is specifiedThe recipe includes none, so as written this is bitter. Sweeten to taste, whether in the pot or at the cup; roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons per quart is a starting point.
- "Milk and water"An unspecified mixture, and a quart in total, not a quart of each; the proportion is left to the cook. Whole milk alone gives a richer result; all water gives thin cocoa.
- A bright saucepan"Bright" means clean and well polished; period pans of this sort were commonly tinned copper or tin. Any heavy-bottomed pan works, but milk catches easily; keep the heat moderate and stir the base.
- One minute of whiskingUnsweetened chocolate takes longer than a minute to disperse fully unless it is finely scraped. Scrape rather than chop, add it off the direct boil, and whisk until no grit settles on a spoon. The froth from the whisk is part of the point.
- YieldA quart makes about four cups, or six small ones.
Through most of the nineteenth century chocolate reached American kitchens as a solid cake of ground nibs, sold in half-pound blocks scored across the face so a cook could break or scrape off measured ounces — which is exactly what this recipe assumes when it says "an ounce as marked." Sugar, milk and often spice were commonly added in the pot rather than by the manufacturer; the sweetened eating bar and the low-fat cocoa powder made possible by Van Houten's cocoa press were both nineteenth-century developments that only slowly displaced the older cake. Drinking chocolate was served alongside pastry, at breakfast, at supper tables and in hotel dining rooms, and the wire egg whisk called for here serves the same purpose as the wooden molinillo used by Spanish and Mexican cooks — working air into the cup so the drink arrived with a head of foam.