BLOGMAS -- DAY 5

 Hello Friends and welcome to Blogmas -- Day 5!  I am truly happy you decided to stop by!

I found an old recipe for Hot Chocolate from the 1800's and thought I would share it with you just for kicks.  It is from "Mrs. Beeton's Book Of Household Management".

Quite a thick book but oh boy, would I love to get my hands on a copy!  I mean an original copy.  I know you can get a reprint on Amazon, here, but the original was a beautiful book and I imagine the reprint is just a book.  Here is a link to get the book on Project Gutenberg, if you would like to take a look.  "Mrs. Beeton's Book of Houehold Management".  

Wow, that took a turn, didn't it.  Anyhow, back to the recipe.

This is the page from the book. 

Under the recipe she tells all about Chocolate and Cocoa.  Now back on page 1191 of the book, Mrs. Beeton tell how to make the hot chocolate and again, a bit of history.  Notice it says to pour the boiling milk over the scraped chocolate and milling it over the fire.  In the margin, she includes an illustration of the mill.  I noticed it had some kind of blades on it so I am guessing the mill is something like a whisk or a manual egg beater.  

I thought this was so interesting because we have it so easy these days and it is fascinating how they did things in the 1800's.  Anyhow...on to my take on the recipe.

With the help of an English Youtube vlogger, I found that quite possibly Mrs. Beeton was using baker's chocolate so I measured, weighed and scraped all the ingredients.

I decided to forego boiling the milk and pouring it over the chocolate and "milling" it over the fire.  Instead I brought the water and cream to a boil over medium heat, once it was boiling I reduced the heat and added the chocolate and stirred it until the chocolate was melted.  Side note...baking chocolate does not melt easily.  

Once the chocolate was melted, I turned off the flame, poured it into a large mug (really it's a soup mug) and used my handy battery operated whisk to "mill" the hot chocolate.  

I forgot to add the sugar and I wish I hadn't because it could have used just a bit but it was really good and while not as thick as I thought it would be, it was thicker than those yucky packages of hot chocolate mix, which I abhor!  Notice that fancy word...abhor?  Well, the recipe is from the 1800's and everybody know they had a much better vocabulary than we do today...especially in England...I digress.

So, I tried the recipe and while it was good, it was a lot of work so I attempted to simplify the recipe for you, just a little.  Well, at least you don't have to figure out what "cake chocolate" and "milling" means.  

Mrs. Beeton’s Hot Chocolate

TO MAKE CHOCOLATE.

1807. INGREDIENTS.—Allow 1/2 oz. of chocolate to each person; to every oz. allow 1/2 pint of water, 1/2 pint of milk.

Mode.—Make the milk-and-water hot; scrape the chocolate into it, and stir the mixture constantly and quickly until the chocolate is dissolved; bring it to the boiling-point, stir it well, and use a mill to thicken. Serve directly with white sugar. Chocolate prepared within a mill, as shown in the engraving, is made by putting in the scraped chocolate, pouring over it the boiling milk-and-water, and milling it over the fire until hot and frothy.

Sufficient.—Allow 1/2 oz. of cake chocolate (baking chocolate) to each person.  

**Scrape = grate or cut small

**Mill = whisk

I think if I were to make it again, which I probably won't, I would use a regular dark chocolate candy bar rather than the baking chocolate and I definitely would use sugar if it was needed.

Honestly, it was fun to experiment but I love my old fashioned hot cocoa using dutch cocoa powder.  Maybe I will share that in another blog post.  Who knows, there might be someone from a younger generation who has only ever had that nasty packaged stuff!  Bleck!

Let me know if you try this.

Please leave me a comment so I know you were here and if you are enjoying Blogmas, so far.

Grace & Peace,

Pam