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Brandy Cocoa (Tablespoons cocoa cups boiling)
3 tablespoons cocoa 1½ cups boiling water ¼ cup sugar 4 cups milk 3 teaspoons cooking brandy Prepare as Reception Cocoa, and add brandy before milling.
Chocolate I 1½ squares unsweetened chocolate ¼ cup sugar 3 cups milk Few grains salt 1 cup boiling water Scald milk. Melt chocolate in small saucepan placed over hot water, add sugar, salt, and gradually boiling water; when smooth, place on range and boil five minutes; add to scalded milk, mill, and serve in chocolate cups with whipped cream. One and one-half ounces vanilla chocolate may be substituted for unsweetened chocolate; being sweetened, less sugar is required.
A hot cocoa built on the book's Reception Cocoa method, with brandy stirred in at the end. The quantities given as "14 cup" are quarter-cups.
- Milling"Mill" means to froth the drink with a wooden chocolate mill (molinillo) twirled between the palms. An immersion blender, a milk frother or a brisk whisk does the same job; the foam is the point, not an optional flourish.
- The cocoa pasteBrandy Cocoa is directed to be made "as Reception Cocoa," which is not printed on this page. The usual Boston Cooking-School method is to mix the cocoa and sugar dry, add the boiling water, boil it briefly, then add the scalded milk. Wetting the cocoa with sugar and water first helps it dissolve smoothly rather than lumping.
- Add brandy off the heatThe brandy goes in after the milk, just before frothing, so the aroma survives. Three teaspoons across roughly five cups of liquid is a flavouring, not a fortification.
- "Cooking brandy"Presumably a cheaper grade kept for kitchen use rather than for drinking. Any drinkable brandy works and tastes better; avoid anything labelled as a flavouring essence, which is a different product.
- Scalding milkBring the milk to about 180F, when it steams and shows bubbles at the rim, and stir it. Whole milk gives the body the recipe assumes; skim milk makes a thin drink.
- YieldAbout five and a half cups of liquid (1½ cups boiling water plus 4 cups milk), less a little lost in boiling.
Cocoa and chocolate got their own chapter in the Boston Cooking-School books because hot beverages were the backbone of afternoon receptions and evening entertaining, and a hostess was expected to have several grades ready: plain cocoa for children, Reception Cocoa thickened and frothed for company, chocolate made with a broken square of bitter chocolate for the smallest cups. The spirit was a common Victorian and Edwardian gesture toward making a nursery drink adult, and cookbooks of the period recommended brandy in hot drinks. The chocolate mill itself descends from the Spanish molinillo, adopted along with the drink from Mesoamerica, and survived in American kitchens as a beverage tool long after chocolate had otherwise become something you ate.