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Chocolate and Cocoa
HOCOLATE, No 1-Take two squares of chocolate; one quart of milk; three tablespoons of sugar; three tablespoons of water. Scrape the chocolate fine, place it in a graniteware pan, add the water, and beat slowly until the chocolate is melted to a thick liquid. Place the milk in a double boiler or in a stewpan set in another pan containing boiling water; and when it is boiling add the melted chocolate, stir until the latter is thoroughly dissolved, put in the sugar, and whip with an eggbeater until the chocolate is light and frothy. One spoon of sweetened whipped cream placed upon each cup of chocolate is a desirable addition.
CHOCOLATE, No. 2-For fifty guests take five quarts of milk; three-fourths pound of chocolate; one pound of sugar; one cup of boiling water. Melt the chocolate over hot water. Heat the milk to boiling, add the water to the chocolate, making a paste, then turn it into the hot milk. Add the sugar, boil for ten minutes and strain before serving. Add one teaspoon of whipped cream to the top of each cup when serving.
COCOA-Take one quart of milk and four full teaspoons of cocoa. Put the milk on the fire in a farina kettle. Moisten the cocoa with a little cold milk, and pour it into the milk in the kettle as soon as it boils, stirring all the while it is being added. Stir until the milk again boils, cover the kettle, boil five minutes, and serve. Whipped cream is often served with cocoa.
Three drinking-chocolate formulas from the era when cocoa was still sold as a bulk powder and chocolate came in unsweetened cakes. The proportions are sound; only the vessels and a few of the boiling times need translating.
- "Two squares of chocolate"A square is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the form the cake was scored into. Two ounces to a quart of milk gives a firmly bitter drink that the three tablespoons of sugar barely sweeten; taste and add more.
- Graniteware and the farina kettleGraniteware is enamelled steel over an iron or steel base. A farina kettle is simply a double boiler, sold for cooking cereal. Any double boiler, or a bowl over simmering water, works for all three recipes.
- The hinge: make a paste firstBoth chocolate recipes melt the chocolate with a small quantity of water before it meets the milk. This is what prevents graininess. Add the water gradually to the melted chocolate and beat it smooth before it goes into the hot milk, not the other way round.
- Boiling for ten minutesNo. 2 calls for a ten-minute boil, which will scorch milk over direct heat and throw a skin. Hold it below a simmer instead, or keep it in the double boiler for the full time; the instruction to strain before serving will catch skin or undissolved chocolate either way.
- The cocoa is thin by modern tasteFour teaspoons of cocoa to a quart of milk is roughly a teaspoon per cup, a weak drink even for unsweetened cocoa, and no sugar is given at all. Two to three teaspoons per cup, with sugar to taste, matches current expectations.
- YieldsNo. 1 makes about four cups. No. 2's five quarts divided among fifty gives servings of only a little over three ounces; scaled down, the ratio is one quart of milk to about two and a half ounces of chocolate and three ounces of sugar.
- WhippingThe eggbeater is not decorative. Beating the finished chocolate to a froth lightens the texture and keeps the cocoa solids in suspension; an immersion blender does it in seconds.
Drinking chocolate was established in American households well before eating chocolate became common, and by the late nineteenth century it was sold both as unsweetened cake, rich in cocoa butter and needing to be scraped and melted, and as defatted cocoa powder, which dissolved with far less trouble. This page gives both, side by side. The instruction in No. 2 to serve fifty guests points to large-scale entertaining of the kind associated with church socials, receptions and afternoon calls. The Butterick company published cook books as part of a line of domestic manuals sold alongside its dress patterns, aimed at the middle-class housekeeper who was expected to entertain competently and at scale.