No. 3700

Chocolate

Chocolat

Have good, fine vanilla chocolate; dissolve it in a tin saucepan, or better still in a chocolate pan as shown in figure, using the mixer to dissolve it, over a slow fire, using a pound of chocolate for a quart of water. When well dissolved strain it through a fine wire sieve and serve in a chocolate pot with a jug of hot water, and one of milk and sugar. Some persons prefer whipped cream in their chocolate. Serve at the same time brioches, grissinis, biscuits and other fancy breads.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a concentrated drinking chocolate meant to be diluted at the table, not a mug of cocoa. Read the proportions with that in mind.

The hinge: it is a base, not a finished drinkA pound of chocolate to a quart of water is far stronger than anything you would drink straight. The jugs of hot water and of milk and sugar sent out alongside are how each guest thins it to taste.
"Vanilla chocolate"In 1894 this meant a sweetened eating chocolate flavoured with vanilla, sold in cakes or tablets, not unsweetened baking chocolate. A good dark bar of 55-65 percent is the nearest modern stand-in; unsweetened chocolate will give a harsh, bitter result at this ratio.
QuantitiesA pound is 450 g, a quart is roughly 950 ml, or 4 cups. The recipe gives no dilution ratio, so how many cups the base stretches to depends entirely on how far each guest lets it down with the hot water and milk.
"A slow fire"Low heat, and genuinely low. Chocolate at this concentration scorches on the bottom of the pan long before the liquid looks hot, and once scorched the whole batch tastes burnt.
The chocolate pan and mixerThe pan is a tall, narrow pot and the mixer a wooden mill twirled between the palms, the French moussoir, cousin of the Spanish molinillo. A stick blender or a whisk does the same job.
StrainingThe fine wire sieve catches unmelted flecks and any grit from the chocolate cake. Modern couverture melts cleanly, but strain anyway if you have added sugar or spice.
ServingWhipped cream is offered for those who want it in place of milk. Brioches, grissini, biscuits and other fancy breads go out at the same time.

A Little History

This entry comes from the beverage recipes in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Drinking chocolate reached European tables from Spanish America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was still, in Ranhofer's day, thought of as a French and Spanish habit taken thick and strong, with the chocolatiere and its wooden mill a Spanish colonial device for frothing the drink. What dates the recipe is not the technique but the assumption that chocolate arrives as a sweetened, vanilla-scented cake to be dissolved by the cook; powdered cocoa, made possible by the Dutch press of the 1820s, had already begun to displace it in ordinary households, and the pound-to-the-quart service with separate jugs belongs to a restaurant that expected to send out a tray, not a cup.