Chocolate
Use square of chocolate, 1 tablespoon sugar and 2 tablespoons hot water for each cup of chocolate desired. Break chocolate into pieces, add hot water, cook together until smooth; add sugar; stir until dissolved; add 1 cup scalded milk. Flavor with vanilla. Let cook about five minutes in a double boiler. May be served with whipped cream. 4 cups hot water 2 cups sugar
A straightforward per-cup formula for drinking chocolate, written when chocolate came in scored cakes rather than chips. Two small points of confusion need clearing up before you start.
- A "square" of chocolateThis means one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the size of one segment scored into the old cakes. Modern baking chocolate is still sold in 1 oz squares; if you use a bar in grams, weigh 28 g per cup. Do not substitute semisweet or the tablespoon of sugar will make it cloying.
- The stray line at the end"4 cups hot water 2 cups sugar" appears to be a fragment from another recipe or formula on the same page. It does not fit the chocolate directions and can be ignored.
- Make a paste firstThe hinge of the method is cooking the chocolate with only 2 tablespoons of water until perfectly smooth before any milk goes in. Chocolate dropped straight into milk is much harder to work smooth and tends to leave specks.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk until it steams and small bubbles form at the edge, around 180F, then stop. Scalding is usually explained as a holdover from handling unpasteurised milk; today it mainly keeps the drink hot and helps the mixture stay smooth.
- The double boilerFive minutes over simmering water is there to prevent scorching, not to cook anything further. A heavy saucepan over low heat works if you stir and do not let it reach a boil.
- Vanilla timingThe recipe flavours before the five minutes in the double boiler; if you want a stronger vanilla note, add it at the end off the heat, as some aroma is lost with held heat.
- YieldAs written, one square of chocolate, 1 tablespoon sugar, 2 tablespoons water and 1 cup milk makes a single generous cup. Multiply straight through for more.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was produced by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and given away to policyholders, part of a broad early twentieth-century push by insurers into public health and household instruction: eat well, keep clean, live longer, cost the company less. That accounts for the tone of the book, which is closer to a nutrition pamphlet than a chef's manual, and for the plainness of a recipe like this one. Drinking chocolate in this period was made from solid unsweetened cake chocolate, sold scored into ounce squares, and the standard American method was to cook it to a smooth paste with a little water before extending it with scalded milk. Cocoa powder, cheaper and easier, appears to have been gaining ground in kitchens, but a cup made from real chocolate carried the cocoa butter that gives the drink its body, worth the extra step of the double boiler.