Cocoa
3 tablespoons cocoa 1/2 tablespoon Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup Karo, Red Label 1 pint milk 1 pint water Bring the milk and water to boiling point, stir in the cocoa, salt, cornstarch and Karo, blended. Boil two or three minutes and serve. A drop or two of vanilla may be added if desired.
A quart of cocoa sweetened with corn syrup and given body with a little cornstarch — a house style from a manufacturer's booklet. Two details carry the whole thing: how the dry ingredients are wetted, and the fact that the starch must actually boil.
- "Blended" is the hingeCocoa powder floats and clumps in hot liquid. Stir the cocoa, cornstarch and salt into the Karo first to make a smooth paste, then add that to the hot milk and water — not the reverse.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in colour-coded grades; Red Label was the darker, more strongly flavoured syrup, with Blue Label being the pale one. Dark corn syrup is the nearest current equivalent, and light corn syrup will work with a milder result.
- Sweetness levelHalf a cup of syrup to a quart of liquid is about two tablespoons per cup, which is sweet by present taste. Start with a third of a cup and adjust.
- Cocoa means unsweetenedPlain unsweetened cocoa powder, natural or Dutch-process — not a sweetened drinking-chocolate mix, which would add sugar on top of the Karo.
- Boil the starchThe two or three minutes of boiling is not for the cocoa but to cook out the raw taste of the cornstarch and let it thicken. Stir the whole time in a heavy pan; a milk mixture with starch in it scorches on the bottom quickly.
- YieldOne quart, or four cups. The cornstarch gives it a slight body that holds up if it sits, though a skin will form — beat it with a whisk before pouring.
- VanillaAdd it off the heat, after boiling, or the aroma cooks off.
This comes from one of the recipe booklets issued by the Corn Products Refining Company, whose brands — Argo and Kingsford's cornstarch, Karo syrup — are named in nearly every ingredient list. Such booklets were given away or sold cheaply to teach home cooks new uses for the company's goods, and the substitution of corn syrup for granulated sugar in a breakfast drink is exactly the sort of lesson they existed to deliver; the argument would have gained force during the First World War, when American households were urged to conserve sugar through voluntary schemes and syrups were promoted as patriotic — though no date is given for the booklet, so the wartime connection can only be a suggestion. The thickening of cocoa with a little starch seems to have been a familiar enough practice rather than a brand invention: it gave a thin, largely water-based drink the mouthfeel of one made with more milk, at a time when cocoa is often said to have been a breakfast beverage for children and invalids as much as a treat.