Pages

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Chocolate Bytes: 350 year old recipe for Chilled Chocolate

What's new is old again:

A researcher in the United Kingdom has discovered a 350-year-old recipe from the Earl of Sandwich for a chilled chocolate dessert that would have been similar to the frozen drinks sold at coffee houses today.

The Earl's own recipe reads: "Prepare the chocolatti [to make a drink]… and Then Putt the vessell that hath the Chocolatti in it, into a Jaraffa [i.e. a carafe] of snow stirred together with some salt, & shaike the snow together sometyme & it will putt the Chocolatti into tender Curdled Ice & soe eate it with spoons."

"It's not chocolate ice cream, but more like a very solid and very dark version of the iced chocolate drinks you get in coffee shops today," researcher Kate Loveman, of the University of Leicester, said in a statement.

"Freezing food required cutting-edge technology in 17th-century England, so these ices were seen as great luxuries."

"Chocolate was first advertised in England around 1640 as an exotic drink made from cacao beans. In the 1660s, when the Earl of Sandwich collected his recipes, chocolate often came with advice about safe consumption.

One physician cautioned that the ingredients in hot chocolate could cause insomnia, excess mucus, or haemorrhoids. People worried that iced chocolate in particular was 'unwholesome' and could damage the stomach, heart, and lungs. "There were ways round this, however. Sandwich thought the best way to ward off the dangers of eating frozen chocolate was to 'Drinke Hott chocolatti ¼ of an houre after' it.

No comments: