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Morocco Milk, Hot
One-half ounce American Cream Chocolate, 2 teaspoonfuls malted milk. Put in 5-ounce bouillon cup, fill cup with hot milk, stir briskly to mix the cream chocolate and milk, and serve with 2 wafers.
A fountain formula written for a dispenser who had a chocolate paste and a malt canister within arm's reach. Two of the three ingredients need translating before you can build it at home.
- American Cream ChocolateA proprietary chocolate preparation of the fountain era, apparently a sweetened chocolate paste or thick syrup sold to soda dispensers; the exact consistency is not recorded here. Substitute about 1 tablespoon of a good thick chocolate syrup, or a heaping teaspoon of cocoa creamed with a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of hot milk to a smooth paste before the rest goes in.
- Half an ounceThe formula mixes measures, weighing the chocolate but spooning the malt. Half an ounce of a chocolate paste comes to roughly a tablespoon.
- Malted milkPlain malted milk powder, the unsweetened or lightly sweetened kind, not a chocolate malt drink mix. If yours is already chocolate-flavoured, cut the chocolate paste back or the cup turns cloying.
- The 5-ounce bouillon cupA small two-handled cup, so this is a scant two-thirds of a cup of milk. Scale up by half again for a modern mug and keep the same ratio.
- Heat of the milkThe milk was wanted hot but not boiled. Bring it to about 160-170F; boiled milk skins over and flattens the malt flavour.
- Make a paste firstThe instruction to stir briskly is the whole technique. Malted milk powder clumps the moment it meets hot liquid, so slack both the powder and the chocolate with a little milk in the bottom of the cup, then fill and stir.
- YieldOne small cup. The two wafers are part of the service, not a garnish; the recipe does not say what kind.
Malted milk powder -- dried milk with malted barley and wheat -- is generally traced to William Horlick's work in Racine, Wisconsin in the 1880s, where it was first sold as an invalid and infant food before drugstore fountains discovered it made a rich, faintly toasty drink. By the time books like this one were compiled, the fountain was expected to earn its keep in January as well as July, and dispensers built out a repertoire of hot drinks. The names were pure marketing. "Morocco" here signals nothing about North Africa and no spice appears in the formula; it was a way to give one more chocolate-and-malt combination a distinct line on the wall card and a price of its own.