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CHOCOLATE FILLING (One-half cup of grated)
One-half cup of grated chocolate; onefourth cup of milk; one cup of brown sugar; two teaspoons of vanilla; one-half teaspoon of butter. Place the milk and chocolate together in a saucepan on the fire, and stir until the whole is thick and creamy; then add the sugar, stir until smooth, and cook two minutes. Add the butter, remove from the fire, and add the vanilla; use when slightly cooled.
A fudge-style filling built on grated block chocolate rather than cocoa powder. It sets fast, so everything about handling it turns on temperature.
- The hinge: spread it warmThis is a small batch of soft fudge, and it stiffens as it cools. "Use when slightly cooled" points to a warm, spreadable consistency rather than a runny one. If it seizes, work in milk a teaspoon at a time over low heat.
- Grated chocolateIn 1911 this means an unsweetened or barely sweetened cake of chocolate, grated on a box grater. Half a cup loosely grated is roughly 1.5 to 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate; finely chopped chocolate behaves the same. Cocoa powder will not substitute here, as the cocoa butter is doing part of the thickening.
- Brown sugarA cup, packed, is about 7 oz. Period brown sugar was less refined and moister than modern light brown; light brown sugar is the closer match, dark will taste noticeably of molasses.
- Heat levelUse low to medium-low throughout. A quarter cup of milk with chocolate scorches quickly, and once the sugar goes in the mixture is dense enough to catch on the bottom of the pan. Stir constantly and use a heavy saucepan.
- That two minutesThe recipe says only to cook two minutes after the sugar goes in; that brief cooking concentrates the syrup enough to help the filling set rather than stay a sauce. No temperature or candy stage is given, so judge by consistency.
- Butter and vanilla lastHalf a teaspoon of butter is a very small amount, usually credited with gloss and smoothness rather than richness. The vanilla goes in off the fire, as its flavour is lost with prolonged heating.
- YieldEnough to fill one layer of an 8- or 9-inch cake. Double it if you want to cover the top as well.
Fillings of this kind sit at the point where cake decoration and candy-making overlap: the method here, boil sugar with liquid for a fixed time and beat in flavoring off the fire, is straight fudge technique scaled down to fill a layer cake. The Butterick Publishing Company put out its cook book alongside its dress patterns and The Delineator, aiming at a middle-class housekeeper, and the instruction is a stated number of minutes rather than a temperature. Grated chocolate as a measurement is a marker of the period too: chocolate reached the kitchen as a hard cake to be shaved down, and the pre-scored, easily chopped baking bar and the chocolate chip were later conveniences.