18th Century Chocolate Cream

Huzzah!

Most Secret, my historical romance set in the days leading up to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, recently won Third Place in the Historical division of the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America International Digital Awards.

In celebration whereof, I’m sharing one of the very, very few 18^th century recipes that use chocolate. They drank chocolate, of course, but they seldom used it otherwise: no one ate bon-bons or devil’s food cake or chocolate chip cookies in the 18^th century or indeed, well into the 19^th century. What made our chocolate candy and cake possible was the invention in 1828 of the Dutch process for treating cacao beans, which greatly facilitated the use of chocolate by reducing the acidity of the beans and increasing solubility.  

Chocolate-Cream

From The Compleat Confectioner, by Mrs. Eales, Confectioner to King William and Queen Ann, Third Edition, 1742

Take a quarter pound of chocolate, breaking it into a quarter of a pint of boiling water; mill (i.e., beat) it and boil it until all the chocolate is dissolved; then put to it a pint of cream and two eggs well beaten; let it boil, milling it all the while; when it is cold, mill it again, that it may go up with a froth.

The chocolate used must have been “drinking chocolate”, sold in tablets, introduced in England in 1674, consisting of roasted, shelled, crushed cacao beans which were ground to a gritty powder, to which were added sugar and spices. 

The closest I could come to 18^th century chocolate tablets was Mexican chocolate tablets sold to make Mexican-style hot chocolate. They contain sugar and cinnamon and are much more brittle than our baking chocolate.

I used two large eggs; 18^th century eggs would have been smaller; a little smaller than our “Small” eggs, which are supposed to average out to 1.5 ounces. Going by the traditional pound cake recipe dating at least to the 18^th century of one pound each of flour, sugar and eggs, eggs of the period must have averaged about 1.33 ounces each.

The result was softer than modern mousse, possibly because of the larger eggs, or maybe because I don’t have a kitchen maid to beat the mixture for an extended period. I may not have boiled it as long as I should, either. But it was quite tasty. When I try it again, I’ll address those issues.