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"Sadok" in news:knIMe.9567$p%3.37755@typhoon.sonic.net:
>
> ObFood: Brillat-Savarin's 1825 hot-cocoa recipe still rules
> -- 4 oz. unsweetened chocolate ...

Thanks for the classic recipe, Sadok!

As a point of potentially interesting detail, that recipe is actually for 
hot chocolate in contrast to hot cocoa.  Probably the phrase "hot cocoa" is 
by habit now for any hot chocolate drink, in the US anyway.  The two were 
traditionally distinguished, and "hot cocoa" is relatively the newer, for 
widespread use.  Most people will probably prefer hot chocolate to hot cocoa 
(using the strict naming) given a side-by-side comparison, because it is 
richer in a couple of ways.  Unsweetened chocolate contains cocoa, but not 
the reverse.  If I remember this (from 35 years ago when I read up on it and 
roasted and processed my own), roasted cocoa beans in industrial practice 
are separated, removing hulls from the nibs or kernels, which have most of 
the fat and flavor (this separation is easy to do at home also).  The nibs 
then are ground and solvent-extracted to an intermediary called cocoa 
liquor, which contains cocoa butter, other flavorful material, and cocoa 
proper, which is the fiber material.  The hulls as I recall are ground to 
obtain additional cocoa.  Cocoa remains as a by-product if cocoa liquor is 
further processed to extract the valuable fat (cocoa butter).  Block 
chocolate for cooking or confection is based on cocoa liquor, minus part of 
the fat and with sometimes additions such as sugar or additional cocoa. 
(Probably this and much more is online by now.)  But using just cocoa for a 
hot chocolate drink gives you much less of the bean and its flavoring 
matter.

By the way, the raw beans I used 35 years ago were one of those specialty 
products from Peet's Coffee Tea and Spices.  During the long interval when 
it was a single shop, and Mr. Peet was still in charge.  (I don't know if 
the current chain still carries them.)

Brillat-Savarin and other French writers have detailed various old chocolate 
rituals (many of which involved nuns).  Brillat described addition of 
ambergris (the valuable by-product from whales), which is unlikely and 
expensive today.  He also described the secret of Mme. d'Arestrel, Mother 
Superior of the Convent of the Visitation at Belley.  " 'When you want to 
taste good chocolate,' said that religious gourmande, `make it the night 
before, in a faience coffee pot, and leave it.  The chocolate becomes 
concentrated during the night and this gives it a much better consistency' " 
[LG 1961, Crown].  Another story I got somewhere concerned an order of nuns 
whose chocolate-making rituals evolved to gross addiction, neglect of normal 
business, and Vatican intervention.  Beware.  (Then there's the British 
Royal Navy with its hot-chocolate recipe based as I remember on unsweetened 
chocolate and canned sweetened condensed milk, boiling water added.)

-- Max