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Hot Chocolate Ice Cream Soda
Hot chocolate, very hot, is nice with a spoonful of ice cream to top it off and is very popular.
Barely more than a serving suggestion, and that is how fountain manuals were written for men who already knew the drill. The whole thing turns on the word "very hot."
- Why the heat mattersA spoonful of ice cream straight from the freezer will pull a good deal of heat out of a mug of chocolate the moment it goes in, and the melting itself absorbs more. That is presumably why the book insists on "very hot" rather than merely warm; the risk otherwise is a tepid drink with a slick of half-melted cream on top.
- Fountain hot chocolateAt the counter this was often not cocoa whisked from powder but a heavy, sugar-saturated chocolate syrup drawn into a mug and filled with hot milk from the steam urn. If you want a starting point, something like 1 to 1.5 oz of thick chocolate syrup to 6-7 oz of hot whole milk gets you close, though the book specifies nothing.
- The ice creamOne small spoonful; a No. 20 or 24 dipper runs roughly 1.3 to 1.6 oz. The recipe does not name a flavour. A full modern scoop would overwhelm a mug-sized drink and turn it into cold chocolate milk.
- VesselServe in a china mug or a footed glass in a metal holder. Thin glass risks cracking from thermal shock at that temperature; if you use glass, make it borosilicate and preheat it.
- Whole milk, and don't boil itWhole milk -- The book does not specify the milk, but whole milk gives a fuller drink than skim. Hold it below a simmer; milk held too hot skins over, and the skin ends up in the cup. (Note this sits awkwardly with the "scalded milk" figure given above.)
- YieldOne drink. Add the ice cream at the counter, immediately before it goes to the customer, not in the kitchen.
Soda fountains were seasonal businesses, and hot drinks were the answer to winter. American fountain trade manuals gave space to hot drinks, among them hot chocolate, served warm from an urn at a counter that dispensed carbonated water in July. Dropping ice cream into hot chocolate is the same trick as the float, run in reverse, and it let a proprietor sell his summer stock through the cold months. The pairing is generally traced to the fountain trade rather than to any single inventor; by the time this book records it, the mention reads less as an introduction than as a reminder that it sells.