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Chocolate Filling
21½ squares unsweetened chocolate 1 cup powdered sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 3 tablespoons milk Yolk 1 egg Melt chocolate over hot water, add one-half the sugar, and milk; add remaining sugar, and yolk of egg; then cook in double boiler until it thickens, stirring constantly at first, that mixture may be perfectly smooth. Cool slightly, flavor, and spread.
Nut or Fruit Filling To White Mountain Cream add chopped walnuts, almonds, figs, dates, or raisins, separately or in combination.
A cooked yolk-thickened chocolate filling for layer cake, of the sort that sets firm enough to slice cleanly. Two things need sorting out before you start: the garbled chocolate quantity and the stray lines from the neighboring recipes.
- The chocolate quantity is a typo"21½ squares" cannot be right for one cup of sugar and three tablespoons of milk; the "2" is most likely a stray digit from a page or recipe number. The intended amount is probably 1½ or 2½ squares. A square of unsweetened chocolate is one ounce, so figure 1½ to 2½ oz.
- Stray text at the end"Nut or Fruit Filling" and "Whites 2 eggs" belong to the adjacent recipes that follow, not to this one. The chocolate filling ends at "spread."
- Powdered sugar is not confectioners' sugarIn books of this period powdered sugar generally means a fine granulated sugar, finer than table sugar and without added cornstarch. Ordinary granulated works; modern confectioners' sugar may make the filling slightly gluey.
- How far to cook itYou want the yolk mixture at roughly 170-180F, where it coats a spoon and holds a drawn line. Much hotter and the yolk begins to curdle; a badly broken custard will not beat smooth again.
- Why the sugar goes in twiceWhy the sugar may go in twice -- half the sugar with the milk loosens the melted chocolate into a smooth paste before the yolk arrives, which reduces the risk of the yolk setting in specks against hot stiff chocolate.
- Spreading consistencyIt thickens considerably as it cools and will tear the cake crumb if you wait too long. Spread while it is still warm and slack enough to move under a knife, thinning with a teaspoon of milk if it stiffens.
- Yield and keepingEnough to fill one 8- or 9-inch two-layer cake, not to cover the sides. Because of the yolk, keep the finished cake refrigerated and eat within two days.
Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book devotes a full chapter to fillings and frostings because the American layer cake of the 1890s was assembled rather than baked whole: two or three thin rounds, a cooked filling between, a boiled or confectioners' frosting over. The unit of "squares" reflects how baking chocolate was sold, in scored one-ounce blocks, and Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, just across the city, had been grinding cacao in the Neponset valley since the eighteenth century. A yolk-thickened filling like this one is essentially a stirred custard carrying chocolate, and it belongs to the same family as the cream fillings on the surrounding pages; the double boiler, which Farmer specifies constantly, keeps the eggs from meeting direct heat.