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Cocoa
Mix equal parts American Powdered Cocoa and granulated sugar. Put 2 teaspoonfuls in cup, add a little hot water, and stir to mix thoroughly; fill cup with hot water, and top with whipped cream.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a household one: the whole point is a pre-mixed dry base kept in a canister so a single cup can be built to order in seconds. Made at home the mix keeps indefinitely in a jar.
- The mix, in modern termsEqual parts unsweetened cocoa powder and granulated sugar; the recipe does not say whether by weight or measure, though measure is the likelier reading. Two teaspoons of the blend is one teaspoon each of cocoa and sugar per cup, which is on the thin, bitter side by current taste; three to four teaspoons of mix gives something closer to a modern hot chocolate.
- "American Powdered Cocoa"Plain unsweetened natural cocoa, not Dutch-process and not a modern drinking-chocolate mix that already contains sugar and milk powder. If you use a sweetened mix, drop the added sugar entirely.
- Why the paste step mattersCocoa powder will not wet out in a full cup of liquid; it floats and clumps. Adding only a little hot water first and stirring to a smooth paste is the hinge of the recipe, and skipping it produces lumps that never disperse.
- Water, not milkThe recipe calls for hot water throughout, presumably drawn from a hot-water tap. Substituting hot milk, or half milk and half water, gives a much rounder cup; if you do, still make the paste with a spoonful of hot water first.
- A pinch of saltNot in the original, and worth adding: an eighth of a teaspoon per batch of dry mix sharpens the chocolate flavor noticeably at these low cocoa levels.
- Whipped creamSpooned on top last so it sits rather than melts in. Real cream collapses within a few minutes, so the drink is best drunk straight away.
- YieldOne cup per serving. A cup each of cocoa and sugar makes enough mix for roughly forty-eight cups at the original strength.
Soda fountains sold hot drinks as well as cold, and cocoa was the workhorse of the winter counter: cheap, shelf-stable, and buildable from a dry canister without a stove. Cocoa powder itself became a mass-market article after the 1828 development, by van Houten, of presses that removed much of the fat from ground cacao, leaving a powder that would suspend in liquid; the distinction the book draws between "American" cocoa and the alkali-treated Dutch style dates from that period and is still the distinction printed on cocoa tins today.