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Chocolate Paste for Hot Chocolate
Make a thick paste with powdered cocoa and warm water, using a very small quantity. Always keep the paste hot and dispense 1 dessertspoonful in cup of hot water or milk and top whipped cream. Allow customer to sweeten with confectioner's sugar. Don't forget to use ½ teaspoonful table salt to the 8 ounces of powdered cocoa when preparing either chocolate syrup or hot chocolate.
A soda-fountain working formula rather than a domestic recipe: a cocoa paste held hot on the counter and let down to order. The proportions are loose by design, so a little interpretation is needed.
- The hinge: hydrate the cocoa firstCocoa powder will not disperse into hot liquid on its own; the starch and fat clump. Mixing it to a stiff paste with a small amount of warm water first is the whole point of the method, and it is why fountain chocolate was smoother than cocoa stirred into a cup.
- "A very small quantity""A very small quantity" most likely refers to the water rather than the cocoa, though the sentence is ambiguous. No ratio is given: add warm water gradually, only enough to bring the cocoa to a stiff paste that will still drop from a spoon.
- A dessertspoonfulBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon: reckon 2 teaspoons. Per cup of hot milk or water that gives a fairly restrained drink by modern taste, since the customer sweetens it at the table.
- Powdered cocoaPowdered cocoa here means plain unsweetened cocoa. Natural (non-alkalized) cocoa was the commoner American product, though Dutch-process was also available; either works, and Dutch-process gives a darker, milder, less acidic cup.
- The saltHalf a teaspoon to 8 ounces of cocoa is roughly 1 part salt in 75 by weight, a seasoning quantity and not a preservative. It sharpens the chocolate flavor and the instruction is worth following.
- Holding the paste hotThe recipe simply insists the paste be kept hot on the counter. At home, make it fresh or refrigerate it and re-warm; a skin will form if it sits uncovered.
- Sweetening at the tableConfectioner's sugar dissolves readily in an already-poured drink where granulated sugar tends to sink, which is presumably why it is named. Modern confectioner's sugar carries cornstarch, which slightly thickens the cup.
- YieldEight ounces of cocoa made to paste will serve a great many cups, well over thirty. Scale down hard for home use: 1 ounce of cocoa with about 1/16 teaspoon of salt is plenty for a few drinks.
Soda fountains ran on pre-made bases — syrups, pastes and extracts held in the counter well so a clerk could build a drink in seconds during a rush. Hot chocolate was the winter counterpart to the summer soda trade, and dispensing instructions of this kind were written for the operator behind the marble, not the cook at home: they assume volume, speed and a customer waiting. Leaving the sweetening to the drinker fits the fountain habit of putting sugar within the customer's reach. The insistence on salt, and the reminder not to forget it, is a telling detail: salt in chocolate was understood in the trade well before it became a talking point in home baking.