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Two Hot Chocolate Syrups
I. One pound powdered cocoa, 1 pint boiling water, 7 pints syrup (12 pounds to gallon of water). Put the cocoa in a double boiler and add 1 pint of syrup and rub into a smooth paste and add the pint of boiling water, place over fire and bring to a boil. Remove from fire, add the balance of syrup and strain. When cold add 1 ounce of vanilla extract if desired. 2. Eight ounces powdered cocoa, 4 pints water, 2½ pounds sugar. Place the cocoa in double boiler, add the water slowly to prevent it from lumping, then put on the fire and cook slowly for about an hour and then add the sugar. When cool add 1 ounce vanilla and strain. Run this through a cheese cloth to remove all lumps.
Two fountain formulas for chocolate syrup, scaled for a shop rather than a household. Both are workable today with unsweetened cocoa powder; the main task is decoding the syrup density and cutting the batch size.
- "Syrup (12 pounds to gallon of water)"This is standard fountain simple syrup: 12 lb sugar dissolved in one gallon of water, a heavy syrup of roughly 60 percent sugar by weight. To make a small quantity, use about 1½ lb (roughly 3⅓ cups) sugar per pint of water, heated until clear.
- Powdered cocoaUnsweetened cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate or a sweetened mix. Some fountain formulas called for Dutch-process cocoa, which dissolves more readily and gives a darker color and mellower flavor, though natural cocoa was also in common use.
- Make the paste firstThe hinge in both versions is wetting the cocoa gradually. Rub it to a smooth paste with a little syrup or water before adding the rest, or the cocoa clumps and no amount of straining afterward will fix the texture.
- YieldVersion I makes close to a gallon of finished syrup. Version II makes roughly 5 pints and is the leaner of the two, with roughly half the sugar per volume; the cocoa per volume is only slightly lower. Quarter either one for home use.
- The hour of slow cookingIn version II the long, gentle cooking in the double boiler hydrates the cocoa starch and thickens the base. It should never approach a hard boil; scorched cocoa turns bitter and cannot be recovered.
- Vanilla goes in coldBoth recipes add the extract after cooling for good reason: alcohol-based extract flashes off in a hot syrup. One ounce is about 2 tablespoons, which reads generous but is right for a syrup diluted at the glass.
- StrainingCheesecloth is specified in version II, and straining does matter for the mouthfeel of a drink poured over hot water or milk. A fine mesh sieve lined with a doubled cloth works; the syrup passes slowly when cold, so strain while still warm.
- ServingRoughly 1 to 1½ fluid ounces of syrup per cup of hot water or hot milk, adjusted to taste. Version II, being less sweet, wants the higher end.
- KeepingThere is no preservative here beyond sugar, and the cocoa solids give bacteria something to work with. Refrigerate and use within a couple of weeks.
These belong to the winter side of the soda fountain trade. American drugstore fountains were seasonal businesses, dead in cold weather, and by the turn of the twentieth century operators were pushing "hot soda"—beef tea, clam bouillon, hot lemonade and above all hot chocolate—to keep the marble counter earning between October and April. A prepared syrup was the whole point: it let a clerk build a drink in seconds from a hot water urn without cooking cocoa to order. The availability of cheap, fine-milled cocoa powder made this possible, a consequence of Van Houten's 1828 hydraulic press that separated cocoa butter from the mass and left a defatted cake that could be ground and, in the Dutch method from the same source, alkalized for solubility. That two formulas of different strength appear side by side is characteristic of fountain manuals, which were trade books first: the proprietor chose according to what the syrup cost him and what his customers would pay.