chocolate cream

To Make Chocolett Cream (Lady Elizabeth Craven)

/ Marissa Nicosia / 1 Comment

See the end of the post for information about the fourth annual Great Rare Books Bakeoff that is taking place this week (September 30-October 8, 2023)!

 

On a recent visit to State College, I was delighted to see a new addition to our recipe book collection. Lady Elizabeth Craven began to compile this recipe book in 1702 in the early years of her marriage and was still adding recipes to its pages at the time of her death in 1704, at age 25. There is much more to learn about Lady Craven and her manuscript and I was immediately interested in her fashionable recipe for “Chocolett Cream.”

As I’ve written in the past about hot chocolate and chocolate cream recipes, chocolate was a new and trendy ingredient in England that had recently arrived from the Americas in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Recipes for chocolate drinks and creams from this period reveal how Indigenous American knowledge about chocolate and the culinary preferences of Spanish colonizers shaped early uses of chocolate in English cookery. Lady Craven’s recipe typifies this trend as it instructs a user to “mill” chocolate or whisk it using a specialized chocolate whisk.

 

Original Recipe

Image of chocolate cream recipe in original manuscript.

To Make Chocolett Cream
Take a pint of cream, one spoonful of chocolet, & the yolks of 2 Eggs & the
white of one, then sweeten it to your taste, let it boyle up, & then put
it into a Chocolet pot, & mill it, & then serve it up when it is cold

Updated Recipe

1 pint (473ml) heavy cream
1 oz. (25g) baking chocolate
2 eggs
¼ cup sugar (50g)

Chop your chocolate into small pieces that will easily dissolve in hot cream.

Separate one egg and set aside one egg white. Whisk one whole egg and one yolk together in a small bowl.

Pour the cream into a small saucepan. Add the sugar, chopped chocolate, and whisked eggs to the pot. Heat over a medium heat until just simmering – about five minutes. Pay close attention to the pot to avoid overcooking and stir to prevent the eggs from solidifying on the bottom of the pot.

Remove the pot from the stove  and pour the chocolate cream mixture into a sturdy bowl (or the bowl of a standing mixer). Beat with an electric mixer (or in a standing mixer, or by whisking vigorously) for about two minutes. (It will take substantially longer if you are doing this by hand.) The chocolate will fully integrate into the mix, small bubbles will form, and it will begin to look glossy.

Rinse out your saucepan and pour the chocolate cream mix back into the pot. Cook over a low heat for approximately ten minutes, whisking constantly. The cream will thicken and reduce in volume during this step.

Pour the hot chocolate cream mix into a storage container or heat-safe serving dish and allow to cool first at room temperature and then in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

Serve the chocolate cream cold.

The chocolate is rich and luscious. I was surprised that this small amount of baking chocolate created such a deep chocolate flavor. As I eat the remaining chocolate cream in my fridge, I plan to pair it with fresh fruit, or maybe a warm fruit sauce, or simple sugar cookies or biscuits.

To Make Chocklate Cream

/ Marissa Nicosia / 7 Comments

It’s hot out. Each year when swampy summer hits Philly, I start to make a list of recipes that do not require me to turn on the oven. So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this recipe for “Chocklate Cream” on the Shakespeare’s World Twitter feed in the midst of many delicious tweets associated with the ongoing Recipes Project “What is a Recipe?” virtual conference. It may be 85F today, but this morning I had milk and eggs in the fridge, chocolate and sugar in the cupboard and this mousse-like pudding only required stirring on the stove.

This recipe is from the Folger Shakespeare Library MS v.b.380. The manuscript is associated with Anne Western and was likely compiled and used in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.  The few pages I’ve looked at are loaded with recipe attributions and efficacy notes. This particular recipe is accompanied by two names: “{anne Western” in the margin and the source “Mrs Reaps” at the end. The phrase “(probatumest)” or “it is proven” suggests that the recipe was tested and worked well.

The Recipe

To Make Chocklate Cream

Boyle apint of milk then scrape in a quarter
of apound of Chocklate lett it boyle togeather
then take it off & sweaten itt with fine sugger
then beat up 4 youlks of Eggs with one white
very well & strane it in to your milk, then sett it  {Anne
on a Charcole fire keep itt sterring always one      Western
way tell tis thick, then serve it in Chany Dishes
or gelly Glasses Mrs Reaps (probatumest)

This decadent chocolate concoction sets into a nice pudding or mousse texture in small ramekins, my version of the “Chany”/China dishes or “gelly Glasses” suggested in the original. Expensive and richly flavored, a chocolate dish like this would have been a quite a treat. I’ve also written about early modern chocolate recipes here (with Alyssa) and here (with John Kuhn).

chocklate cream
chocklate cream

Our Recipe

I halved the original proportions and made a batch of 4 generous or 6 slightly smaller servings. I also used a mix of baking chocolate and 80% chocolate (because that’s what I had around) and sweetened the mix to my taste. Add more or less sugar depending on your chocolate selection and your personal sweet tooth.

1 c milk
1/8 lb chocolate (mixed unsweetened baking and 80% dark chocolate, or more to taste) *Revised: Recipe tested with 1/2 lb chocolate*
1/4 c sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk

Shave or chop your chocolate into small pieces that will easily dissolve in hot milk. (In this heat, chopping worked better than shaving in my kitchen.)

Whisk together your egg yolk and whole egg.

Bring the milk to a boil.

Lower the heat to medium, add the chocolate, and stir. Commit to stirring clockwise or counterclockwise for the entire preparation. The mixture will thicken quickly.

Add your sugar and taste. Add more sugar by the tablespoon or teaspoon to adjust the flavor.

Lower the heat to low and stir in the eggs. Stir until the mixture is consistent and glossy.

Pour into small containers to set and serve (ramekins, bowls, glasses, etc). Allow to cool before eating.

chocklate cream
chocklate cream

The Results

A rich, tasty dessert that I’ll be making again.  It’s exactly the kind of easy, crowd-pleasing dessert that you can prepare in advance. A bit of vanilla or fresh fruit on the side would take this to a whole other level. Let us know what you try.