A couple months ago, I adapted a recipe for a Chocolate Tart from 1737 and promised a bit more about English chocolate history. This week I present a bit more – a couple very simple adapted recipes and a little about what “chocolate” meant in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Like several of my adaptions recently, the chocolate dishes I tried start from a non-English source. François Massialot was chief cook to Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, brother of French King Louis XIV. The cook’s recipes were published in two books: Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois (1691) and Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits (1692). In 1702, content from both books was translated into English as The Court and Country Cook, with part of the subtitle - “Together with New Instructions for Confectioners” - acknowledging the second of the two originals.
In Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois there is a recipe for “Crème de Chocolat,” which is translated as “Chocolate-cream.” My adaption of this is essentially a very nice hot chocolate. Also in The Court and Country Cook are instructions for “Chocolate-biskets” which come from “Biscuits de Chocolat” in the Nouvelle instruction. I believe a later English book - A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery (1714) - probably bases its recipe for “Chocolate-Puffs” on these “biskets.” The ingredients are the same, the methods are similar and the translation of Massialot’s work was very influential among English cooks of the period. I have chosen to base my adaptation on the later recipe because it includes quantities.
I therefore present recipes for “Chocolate-cream” and “Chocolate-Puffs,” then give some notes on adaption for each, and on some of Massialot’s general writing about chocolate.
Recipes
"Chocolate-Cream"
Ingredients
- 570 ml (about 1 imperial quart) milk
- 115 g (about ¼ lbs) sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 25g of unsweetened chocolate, grated
Instructions
In a medium saucepan, add the sugar to the milk. Stir to dissolve.
On medium high heat, bring the milk to a boil.
Boil for 15 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent catching and burning.
Stirring constantly, add your egg yolk slowly.
Continuing to stir, allow to boil for another minute and remove from heat.
Stir in grated chocolate until completely melted and combined.
Return to the heat and return to the boil for another minute.
Pass the liquid through a fine mesh sieve, discarding any solids.
Serve hot or warm.
Notes
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| A 1705 edition of Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois |
I tried to match the quantities from the original French recipe, which was relatively easy since the instruction are so simple. Massialot calls for a “quarteron” of sugar and quarteron could mean a quarter of a lot of things; however, in context, the English translator rendering it as “a quarter of a Pound” seems correct. Both versions say to add enough chocolate for the cream to take its colour; 25g was my judgement on that.
In a couple of instances, the recipes measure timings in “boullions” or “tours” in French, translated as “walms” in English. “Walm” meant “roll or boil up” so in cookery, a walm was when a liquid came up to a full boil. I translated this into minutes.
In a modern version of this, you would probably temper the egg yolk with a little of the hot milk before adding it. Adding it straight means the egg scrambles and forms small chunks. I think the original recipe dealt with this by calling for the drink to be strained before service. The French instructions call for it to be passed through “étamine” or cheesecloth.
Despite what the term “Chocolate-Cream” might conjure in a modern context, this is, as I said, hot chocolate made just a bit richer with egg yolk. The chocolate smoothness is enhanced, and it is actually an extremely nice, if a little process-heavy, version of the drink.
"Chocolate-Puffs"
Ingredients
- 225g (about ½ lbs) caster (berry) sugar, sifted
- 30g (about 1 oz) unsweetened chocolate, finely grated
- 1 egg white
Instructions
Preheat an oven to 95°C (200°F).
Prepare a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
Whisk together sugar and chocolate in a medium bowl.
In a small bowl, whisk the egg white into a froth but not until it forms peaks.
Mix egg white into sugar and chocolate mixture until it forms a firm paste.
After wetting or oiling your hands, roll small pieces of paste into balls or logs.
Press each between your hands slightly to flatten it.
Place at least a centimeter apart on your parchment-covered baking sheet.
Bake for 2 hours.
Very carefully remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. (Not doing this means you only have a couple for presentation - see my pictures.)
Serve.
Notes
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| The 5th (1734) edition of A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts |
The actual instructions are for “Lemon or Chocolate-Puffs” with the quantity of chocolate provided at the end of the recipe. I followed the instructed quantities as written for the chocolate and the other two ingredients.
The paste is explicitly formed into shapes “some round and some long.”
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| A 1715 edition of Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs et les fruits |
I include Massialot’s “Biscuits de Chocolat” recipe and its translation above for comparison. He combines the chocolate and egg white first, then adds the sugar. Both sets of instructions say to lay your shapes on paper and cook at a very low temperature: “a very slow oven” in English and “à petit feu” in French. The latter translates as “with a small fire” but can also mean “a little by little.”
The long bake time was in hope that these would firm up and maybe puff more; the result was different from that texturally, but they worked in the end. As I mentioned in the instructions, being made mostly of hot sugar, these are very fragile until cooled. The parchment slipped off the baking sheet and made crumbs of most of mine. In hindsight, something like egg white between the parchment and the baking sheet would have helped.
Overall, the crunchiness of slow baked then cooled sugar and the flavour of the chocolate was very nice. I found them, unsurprisingly, too sweet and would use more chocolate to sugar, if I were making them just to eat.
Historical Notes on Massialot and “Chocolat”
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| The beginning of the section on chocolat, including the ingredients of the pâte solide used to make the drink. |
Massialot’s writing make the distinction between chocolate and cacao when he says how to make drink. He says it is made with a “pâte solide” of different ingredients, the primary base of which is “le Cacao.” The other ingredients are achiote, vanilla pods, sugar, cinnamon, Mexican pepper, – probably chilis – and cloves. Some add orange flower water, musk, or ambergris. If that is the composition of his “chocolat,” it would certainly change the taste of these recipes.
He describes the actual cacao plant, fruit, and beans quite accurately. Also included are explanations of what achiote and vanilla are; they being less familiar products of the Americas along with cacao. The best chocolate is, however, prepared in Spain according to the French cook. In extensive detail, the text then provides instructions for making chocolate – the drink – from the cacao-based solid paste. Being very reductive, it comes down to grating the solid paste into boiling water or milk with sugar.
Later editions of Nouvelle instruction would expand this section greatly, providing step-by-step instructions of how to prepare and roast cacao beans and including more extensive descriptions of the additives. A number of other chocolate recipes are added to the book as a whole. They include “Massepain [marzipan] de Chocolat”, “Pastilles [a kind of gum and sugar candy] de Chocolat”, and additional recipes for chocolate cream and biscuits. Massailot or his successors seemed to have developed a thorough first-hand knowledge of working with the then American import.
Next week, I want to attempt another Massailot chocolate recipe – one from his original Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois and translated in The Court and Country Cook. It is “A Sea-duck with Chocolate in a Ragoo.” I will probably use a regular duck and probably won’t get all the mushrooms and truffles it calls for, but I am going to try to give it a try.
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