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Breakfast Cocoa
1½ tablespoons prepared cocoa 2 tablespoons sugar Few grains salt 2 cups boiling water 2 cups milk Scald milk. Mix cocoa, sugar, and salt, dilute with onehalf cup boiling water to make smooth paste, add remaining water, and boil five minutes; turn into scalded milk and beat two minutes, using egg-beater, when froth will form, preventing scum, which is so unsightly; this is known as milling.
A straightforward drinking cocoa from Fannie Farmer's kitchen, built on the sound principle that cocoa powder needs to be cooked in water before milk goes anywhere near it.
- "Prepared cocoa"Cocoa powder rather than block chocolate: the partly defatted kind sold in tins. Nineteenth-century "prepared" cocoas were not always pure powder, some carrying added starch or sugar, though the sugar called for here points to an unsweetened one. Either natural or Dutch-process works today; Dutch-process gives a darker, milder cup.
- The five-minute boilThis is the hinge. Boiling the cocoa paste in water gelatinizes the starch in the powder and drives off the raw, dusty edge, which is why the finished drink tastes rounder than cocoa simply stirred into hot milk. Do not skip it or shorten it much.
- Scalding the milkScalding means bringing milk to just below a boil, around 180F, when small bubbles ring the edge. With pasteurized milk it is no longer necessary for safety, but it does bring the milk up to temperature so the finished cocoa is hot rather than lukewarm.
- MillingThe whisking at the end is the whole point of the name. Beating aerates the surface so a foam sits on top instead of the skin that forms when hot milk stands. A stick blender or milk frother does it faster; the froth collapses within a few minutes, so serve at once.
- SweetnessTwo tablespoons of sugar for four cups of liquid is restrained by current taste. Taste before serving and adjust; the salt is not optional, as it sharpens the chocolate flavor considerably.
- YieldFour cups, so four small cups or three generous mugs. It reheats acceptably but must be re-milled to bring back the froth.
Cocoa in the American home kitchen of the 1890s was a relatively new convenience: the press that separated cocoa butter from the bean, leaving a powder that could be mixed with liquid, dates to 1828, and by Fannie Farmer's day tinned cocoa was a cheap, keeping pantry staple in a way that block chocolate was not. Cocoa was widely promoted as a wholesome breakfast drink for children and invalids, gentler than coffee or tea. The word milling comes from the chocolate mill, the English name for the Spanish molinillo, the turned wooden whisk twirled between the palms to froth chocolate, a colonial-era Spanish implement; Farmer's egg-beater is the same idea with a crank on it.