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Chocolate with Milk
Have in an earthen pot on the range a pint of cold water, crumble four ounces prepared chocolate, add to pot and briskly mix with a very clean wooden spoon till completely dissolved. Gradually add a quart fresh milk, mix well, let gently come to a boiling point, frequently mixing with wooden spoon meanwhile, pour into a hot pitcher and serve in six chocolate cups with fine sugar separately.
A straightforward drinking chocolate built on the old European method: dissolve the chocolate in water first, then let milk down into it. Two words carry most of the weight here — "prepared chocolate" and "boiling point."
- "Prepared chocolate"Most likely a cake of chocolate already ground for use, often with sugar and sometimes cinnamon or vanilla, sold in blocks to be crumbled; sweetness varied, and the sugar passed separately suggests it was not heavily sweetened. Modern equivalents are Mexican-style tablets (Ibarra, Taza) or a good 60-70% bar; if you use unsweetened baking chocolate you will need sugar in the pot, not just on the side.
- QuantitiesFour ounces is by weight, roughly one large bar. A pint of water plus a quart of milk is 2 cups water to 4 cups milk — a fairly thin, drinkable chocolate by current tastes rather than a thick sipping chocolate.
- The earthen potUnglazed or glazed earthenware was used because it holds heat evenly and does not react with the cocoa. A heavy-bottomed nonreactive saucepan does the same job; the point is slow, gentle heat, since milk and cocoa solids scorch on thin metal.
- "Let gently come to a boiling point"The hinge of the recipe. Bring it just to the first tremble and take it off. A full boil will skin the milk, drive the cocoa butter out in a slick, and give the drink a cooked, scalded flavor.
- Why the wooden spoonConstant stirring keeps the cocoa solids from settling and catching on the bottom, and prevents a skin forming on top. The recipe's emphasis is on a "very clean" spoon; any spoon or a small whisk is fine now, but do not stop stirring.
- YieldSix servings, as stated. The pint of water and quart of milk make roughly 48 fl oz, so about 8 oz a cup once poured out -- generous for the small "chocolate cups" named, or four large mugs.
- Sugar separatelyServing sugar on the side is consistent with prepared chocolate of variable sweetness. Superfine ("fine") sugar dissolves quickly in the hot drink; coarser granulated takes more stirring.
Chocolate reached Europe from Mesoamerica as a drink, and for three hundred years that is chiefly what it was — a beverage made from ground cakes of chocolate, dissolved and whisked to a froth. The two-stage method here, water first and then milk, is inherited from Spanish and French practice: chocolate disperses more readily in water, and starting that way avoids lumps that milk alone will not break up. Milk chocolate as a drink was generally the richer, later, northern-European fashion; the Spanish habit was water. The book, generally attributed to Filippini and aimed at Delmonico's-trained cooks and the households that emulated them, presumes the dedicated "chocolate cups" of the period — small, tall, and said to have often been sold with their own pot and a stirrer. The sugar is passed separately rather than stirred in.