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Chocolate Custard
Break two sections chocolate in a half-dozen pieces, put it in a pan over boiling water, with milk enough to barely cover it; mash and stir perfectly smooth, then add the rest of the milk (one quart in all, reserving three table-spoons in which to dissolve the corn starch,) one cup sugar, yolks of six eggs, a heaping table-spoon corn starch; beat the yolks, add the sugar and corn starch (dissolved in milk), stir all slowly in the boiling milk, in which the chocolate is dissolved, add a pinch of salt, and let cook a few minutes, stirring constantly; eat cold with white cake. - Miss Burnie Johnson.
A stirred stovetop custard thickened with both yolks and cornstarch, which makes it forgiving compared with a pure egg custard. Two details need translating: what "two sections" of chocolate means, and how hot to let it get.
- "Two sections chocolate"Nineteenth-century baking chocolate came in cakes scored into squares of roughly one ounce each, unsweetened and unemulsified. Use 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped. If you substitute bittersweet, cut the sugar to about two-thirds of a cup.
- The pan over boiling waterThis is a double boiler: a bowl or pan set over, not in, simmering water. It is worth keeping even though the recipe later says "boiling milk" — the starch and yolks together will scorch on direct heat if your attention wanders.
- Temper the eggsThe instruction to stir the yolk-sugar-starch mixture "slowly in the boiling milk" works only if it goes in a thin stream while you whisk hard. Easier and safer: whisk a cup of the hot chocolate milk into the yolks first, then return everything to the pan.
- How far to cook itWith cornstarch present, the custard needs to reach a bare simmer and hold there 1℧? minutes for the starch to thicken fully and to cook out the raw taste. Stir constantly and pull it as soon as it coats a spoon heavily; the starch gives the yolks some protection, but prolonged overcooking will still turn it grainy.
- Cornstarch measureA heaping tablespoon is roughly 1 1/2 tablespoons. Dissolve it in the three reserved tablespoons of cold milk to a smooth slurry — lumps that go in dry will not break up later.
- Strain and chillPour through a fine sieve into a bowl or into individual cups, press plastic wrap on the surface if you dislike skin, and refrigerate at least three hours. Served cold, as directed.
- YieldOne quart of milk with six yolks gives about six to eight servings of pourable custard, thicker than pouring cream but not set enough to unmould.
- The six whitesThe white cake called for at the end would use whites, and this custard leaves six behind, so the pairing may well be deliberate; the recipe itself does not say so.
The Dixie Cook Book was published in the 1880s and, like many compiled American cookbooks of the period, printed recipes credited to named contributors — here Miss Burnie Johnson — largely as submitted, which is why the punctuation wanders and the measurements assume you already know what you are doing. Chocolate reached kitchens of the period as hard unsweetened cakes of ground cocoa liquor, sold scored into squares, which had to be melted with liquid and mashed smooth because they contained no added cocoa butter or emulsifier to help them disperse. Cornstarch, commercially available in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century, appears here as insurance — a little starch lets a cook thicken a quart of milk with fewer eggs and reduces the risk of curdling on an unregulated wood or coal range. The closing direction to eat it cold with white cake would suit a household using yolks and whites in turn, though the book does not spell that out.