Good reading

Ok, I didn’t get my good Chocolate Friday post finished so you have to read about my books. I have many books on chocolate and these are three that are on my “special” list.

“The Chocolate-Plant and its Products”, published by Walter Baker and Co., 1891

I bought this one on Ebay. 40 pages with many really nice drawings. They go through the history of chocolate, as well as processing and chemistry. At the end they have several recipes too.

Baker apparently didn’t think too fondly of the “dutching process” and takes every opportunity to point out how bad the process is:

“The ideal method of preparation is not a chemical torturing by the addition of foreign ingredients, as in the alkali process, but it consists in the the complete unlocking, by perfectly natural, mechanical means, of all the virtues of the seeds.”

Baker goes on to brag about their manufacturing capabilities, including their Dorchester plant which had capacity for five tons of chocolate daily. In the book, the word “five” appears to have been corrected and retyped in several places, so its possible they changed the published books to reflect an upgrade in manufacturing.

The recipes at the end are authored by Miss Parloa. Here is one for “Plain Chocolate”, which in this case is for drinking:

For six people, use on quart of milk, two ounces of W. Baker & Co.’s No. 1 chocolate, one teaspoonful of corn-starch, three tablespoons of sugar, and two tablespoonfuls of hot water.

Mix the corn-starch with one gill of the milk. Put the remainder of the milk on to the double-boiler. When the milk comes to the boilingpoint stir in the corn-starch, and cook for ten minutes. Have the chocolate cut in fine bits and put it in a small iron or granite-ware pan; add the sugar and water, and place the pan over a hot fire. Stir constantly until the mixture is smooth and glossy. Add this to the hot milk and beat the mixture with a wisk until it is frothy. Or the chocolate may be poured back and forth from the boiler to a pitcher, holding high the vessel from which you pour. This will give a thick froth. Serve at once.

If you prefer not to have the chocolate thick, omit the corn-starch.

NOTE: 1 gill = 1/2 cup (118 ml)

“The Problem of Chocolate Fat-bloom”, Robert Whymper, 1933.

Another cool Ebay purchase! Not as old as the Baker one but just as nice. 147 pages. One the inside covers is an ink stamp from the “Washington Chocolate Co.”, so I guess this was part of their library at one time. This book is pretty technical and not so much entertaining as Baker’s book. Whymper goes through some pretty complex tempering discussions involving crystalizations, melting points, and other fancy chemisty terms. I liked it because I had a big interest in the chemistry of chocolate and 1) it was hard to find a book that talked about it and 2) when they did talk about it, they always referenced Whymper’s book.

In the text I noticed that he often used the celcius scale rather than fahrenheit, and in his Preface, he makes the note that he used the centigrade scale for all the “scientific data” and the fahrenheit scale for all the “factory” information.

The Preface in the book starts with the following line which I took as a rather snippy comment on the industry:

“I am told that this is a most inopportune moment to bring before the Chocolate Industry any matter not directly connected with either cheapening the price of, or increasing the profits from, its products.”

Whymper also has a dedication in the front of book as follows:

“Dedicated to QUETZALCOATL who brought down from Heaven the Food of the Gods, and, once upon a time, taught Men how It should be Grown and Used.”

NOTE: Quetzalcoatl was the Aztec name for the god who was said to have given cacao (chocolate) to people.

“The New Taste of Chocolate”, Maricel E. Presilla, copywrite 2001, 198 pages.

This I bought in the store and it wis one of the most fascinating books about chocolate, cacao and south american culture I have ever read. The author grew up in Cuba and her grandmother owned a cacao farm. The book is jam packed with pictures of plants, and stories of the entire culture around growing, harvesting, and processing cacao. Incredible detail, right down to pictures of every type of cacao pod and bean there is. If you are really interested in where chocolate really comes from, this is the book.

This is the book where I first learned about the real differences in the types of cacao and how each is grown. For example, there are basically 3 types of cacao: Criollos, Forasteros, Trinitarios. Within each of these groups, there are dozens of different types. The book has some very detailed information on different hybrids of different plants, and how this hybridization is used to increase the bean flavor and also block the deadly spread of diseases.

In the back these are several traditional chocolate recipes. She describes how to grind and roast whole cocoa beans and use them from the recipes. Traditionally, the beans are roasted over a small flame in a pan, but you’d use a griddle on the stove I guess if you don’t have that. I will have to try it when I can get more beans.

Well, those are my books for today. I have alot of others and I may make a note about them later, but not in such a long format.

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