 Selections from chocolate and cocoa recipes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Clarica. Selections from chocolate and cocoa recipes by Miss Maria Parloa, specially prepared for Walter Baker and Company, Ltd. Cocoa and chocolate. The term cocoa, a corruption of cacao, is almost universally used in English-speaking countries to designate the seeds of the small tropical tree known to botanists as theobroma cacao, from which a great variety of preparations under the name of cocoa and chocolate for eating and drinking are made. The name chocolate is nearly the same in most European languages, and is taken from the Mexican name of the drink chocolate or cacao. The Spaniards found chocolate in common use among the Mexicans at the time of the invasion under Cortez in 1519, and it was introduced into Spain immediately after. The Mexicans not only used chocolate as a staple article of food, but they used the seeds of the cacao tree as a medium of exchange. No better evidence could be offered of the great advance which has been made in recent years in the knowledge of dietetics than the remarkable increase in the consumption of cocoa and chocolate in this country. The amount retained for home consumption in 1860 was only 1,181,054 pounds, about three-fifths of an ounce for each inhabitant. The amount retained for home consumption for the year ending December 31, 1908, was 93,956,721 pounds, over 16 ounces for each inhabitant. Although there was a marked increase in the consumption of tea and coffee during the same period, the ratio of increase fell far below that of cocoa. It is evident that the coming American is going to be less of a tea and coffee drinker and more of a cocoa and chocolate drinker. This is the natural result of a better knowledge of the laws of health and of the food value of a beverage which nourishes the body while it also stimulates the brain. Baron von Liebig, one of the best known writers on dietetics, says, It is a perfect food, as wholesome as delicious. A beneficent restorer of exhausted power. But its quality must be good and it must be carefully prepared. It is highly nourishing and easily digested and is fitted to repair wasted strength, preserve health and prolong life. It agrees with dry temperaments and convalescence, with mothers who nurse their children, with those whose occupations oblige them to undergo severe mental strains, with public speakers and with all those who give to work a portion of the time needed for sleep. It soothes both stomach and brain and for this reason, as well as for others, it is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits. Manjeu Brilat Savarin, in his entertaining and valuable work, Physiologie du Gout, says, Chocolate came over the mountains, from Spain to France, with Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III and queen of Louis XIII. The Spanish monks also spread the knowledge of it by the presents they made to their brothers in France. It is well known that Linnaeus called the fruit of the cocoa tree, theobroma, food for the gods. The cause of this emphatic qualification has been sought and attributed by some to the fact that he was extravagantly fond of chocolate, by others to his desire to please his confessor, and by others to his gallantry, a queen having first introduced it into France. The Spanish ladies of the New World, it is said, carried their love for chocolate to such a degree that, not content with partaking of it several times a day, they had it sometimes carried after them to church. This flavoring of the senses often drew upon them the censures of the bishop, but the Reverend Father Escobar, whose metaphysics were as subtle as his morality was accommodating, declared formally, that a fast was not broken by chocolate prepared with water. Thus wire-drawing, in favor of his penitence, the ancient adage, liquidum nonfrangit gejunium. Time and experience, he says further, have shown that chocolate, carefully prepared, is an article of food as wholesome as it is agreeable, that it is nourishing, easy of digestion, and does not possess those qualities injurious to beauty with which coffee has been reproached, that it is excellently adapted to persons who are obliged to a great concentration of intellect in the toils of the pulpit or the bar, and especially to travellers, that it suits the most feeble stomach, that excellent effects have been produced by it in chronic complaints, and that it is a last resource in affections of the pylorus. Some persons complain of being unable to digest chocolate, others, on the contrary, pretend that it is not sufficient nourishment, and that the effect disappears too soon. It is probable that the former have only themselves to blame, and that the chocolate which they use is of bad quality, or badly made, for good and well-made chocolate must suit every stomach which retains the slightest digestive power. In regard to the others, the remedy is an easy one. They should reinforce their breakfast with a pâté, a cutlet, or a kidney. Moisten the whole with a good draft of Sokonuso chocolate, and thank God for a stomach of such superior activity. This gives me an opportunity to make an observation whose accuracy may be depended upon. After a good, complete, and copious breakfast, if we take, in addition, a cup of well-made chocolate, digestion will be perfectly accomplished in three hours, and we may dine whenever we like. Out of zeal for science, and by dint of eloquence, I have induced many ladies to try this experiment. They all declared in the beginning that it would kill them, but they have all thriven on it and have not failed to glorify their teacher. The people who make constant use of chocolate are the ones who enjoy the most steady health, and are the least subject to a multitude of little ailments which destroy the comfort of life. Their plumpness is also more equal. These are two advantages which everyone may verify among his own friends, and wherever the practice is in use. In corroboration of Mangeur-Brillat-Savarin's statement as to the value of chocolate as an aid to digestion, we may quote from one of Madame de Savigne's letters to her daughter. I took chocolate night before last to digest my dinner in order to have a good supper. I took some yesterday for nourishment so as to be able to fast until night. What I consider amusing about chocolate is that it acts according to the wishes of the one who takes it. Chocolate appears to have been highly valued as a remedial agent by the leading physicians of that day. Christophe Ludwig Hoffmann wrote a treatise entitled Potus Chocolate, in which he recommended it in many diseases, and instanced the case of Cardinal Richelieu, who, he stated, was cured of general atrophy by its use. A French officer who served in the West Indies for a period of fifteen years, during the early part of the last century, wrote, as a result of his personal observations, a treatise on the natural history of chocolate being a distinct and particular account of the cacao tree, its growth and culture, and the preparation, excellent properties, and medicinal virtues of its fruit, which received the approbation of the Regent of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, and which was translated and published in London in 1730. After describing the different methods of raising and curing the fruit and preparing it for food, which is not worthwhile to reproduce here, as the methods have essentially changed since that time, he goes on to demonstrate, as the result of actual experiment, that chocolate is a substance very temperate, very nourishing, and of easy digestion, very proper to repair the exhausted spirits and decayed strength, and very suitable to preserve the health and prolong the lives of old men. I could produce several instances, he says, in favour of this excellent nourishment, but I shall content myself with two only, equally certain and decisive in proof of its goodness. The first is an experiment of chocolates being taken for the only nourishment, made by a surgeon's wife of Martinico. She had lost, by a very deplorable accident, her lower jaw, which reduced her to such a condition that she did not know how to subsist. She was not capable of taking anything solid, and not rich enough to live upon jellies and nourishing broths. In this straight she determined to take three dishes of chocolate, prepared after the manner of the country, one in the morning, one at noon, and one at night. There chocolate is nothing else but cocoa kernels dissolved in hot water, with sugar, and seasoned with a bit of cinnamon. This new way of life succeeded so well that she has lived a long while since, more lively and robust than before this accident. I had the second relation from a gentleman of Martinico, and one of my friends not capable of a falsity. He assured me that in his neighbourhood an infant of four months old unfortunately lost his nurse, and its parents not being able to put it to another, resolved, through necessity, to feed it with chocolate. The success was very happy, for the infant came on to a miracle, and was neither less healthy nor less vigorous than those who are brought up by the best nurses. Before chocolate was known in Europe, good old wine was called the milk of old men, but this title is now applied with greater reason to chocolate. Since its use has become so common that it has been perceived that chocolate is, with respect to them, what milk is to infants. In reality, if one examines the nature of chocolate a little, with respect to the constitution of aged persons, it seems as though the one was made on purpose to remedy the defects of the other, and that it is truly the panacea of old age. The three associated beverages, cocoa, tea, and coffee, are known to the French as aromatic drinks. Each of these has its characteristic aroma. The fragrance and flavour are so marked that they cannot be imitated by any artificial products, although numerous attempts have been made in regard to all three. Hence the detection of adulteration is not a difficult matter. Designing persons, aware of the extreme difficulty of imitating these substances, have undertaken to employ lower grades, and, by manipulation, copy, as far as may be, the higher sorts. Everyone knows how readily tea and coffee, for that matter, will take up odours and flavours from substances placed near them. This is abundantly exemplified in the country grocery or general store, where the teas and coffees share in the pervasive fragrance of the cheese and kerosene. But perhaps it is not so widely understood that some of these very teas and coffees had been artificially flavoured or corrected before they reached their destination in this country. Cacao lends itself very readily to such preliminary treatment. In a first class article, the beans should be of the highest excellence. They should be carefully grown on the plantation, and they are prepared with great skill, arriving in the factory in good condition. In the factory they should simply receive the mechanical treatment requisite to develop their high and attractive natural flavour and fragrance. They should be most carefully shelled after roasting, and finely ground without concealed additions. This is the process in all honest manufacturers of the cacao products. Now as a matter of fact, in the preparation of many of the cacao products on the market, a wholly different course has been pursued. Beans of poor quality are used because of their cheapness, and in some instances they are only imperfectly, if at all, shelled before grinding. Chemical treatment is relied on to correct in part the odour and taste of such inferior goods, and artificial flavours, other than the time-honoured natural vanilla and the like, are added freely. The detection of such imposition is easy enough to the expert, but is difficult to the novice. Therefore the public is largely unable to discriminate between the good and the inferior, and it is perforce compelled to depend almost entirely on the character and reputation of the manufacturer. A distinguished London physician, in giving some hints concerning the proper preparation of cocoa, says, start with a pure cocoa of undoubted quality and excellence of manufacture, and which bears the name of a respectable firm. This point is important for there are many cocos on the market, which have been doctored by the addition of alkali, starch, malt, cola, hops, etc. Baker's breakfast cocoa is absolutely pure, and, being ground to an extraordinary degree of fineness, is highly soluble. The analyst of the Massachusetts State Board of Health states in his recent valuable work on food inspection and analysis that the treatment of cocoa with alkali, for the purpose of producing a more perfect emulsion, is objectionable, even if not considered as a form of adulteration. Coco, thus treated, is generally darker in color than the pure article. The legitimate means, he says, for making it as soluble as possible, is to pulverize it very fine, so that particles remain in even suspension and form a smooth paste. That is the way Baker's cocoa is treated. It has received the grand prize, highest award ever given in this country, and altogether 52 highest awards in Europe and America. Choice recipes by Miss Marla Parloa, specially prepared for Walter Baker & Company, Ltd. Plain Chocolate For six people use one quart of milk, two ounces of Walter Baker & Company's premium number one chocolate, one tablespoonful of cornstarch, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, and two tablespoonfuls of hot water. Mix the cornstarch with one gill of the milk. Put the remainder of the milk on to heat in the double boiler. When the milk comes to the boiling point, stir in the cornstarch and cook for ten minutes. Have the chocolate cut in fine bits and put it in a small iron or graniteware 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 whisk 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 it once. If you prefer not to have the chocolate thick, omit the cornstarch. If condensed milk is used, substitute water for the milk named above and add three tablespoon of condensed milk when the chocolate is added. Chocolate Vienna style. Use four ounces of Walter Baker & Company's vanilla chocolate, one quart of milk, three tablespoons of hot water, and one tablespoonful of sugar. Cut the chocolate in fine bits. Put the milk on the stove in the double boiler, and when it has been heated to the boiling point, put the chocolate, sugar, and water in a small iron or graniteware pan, and stir over a hot fire until smooth and glossy. Stir this mixture into the hot milk and beat well with a whisk. Serve it once, putting a tablespoonful of whipped cream in each cup, and then filling up with the chocolate. The plain chocolate may be used instead of the vanilla, but in that case use a teaspoonful of vanilla extract, and three generous tablespoonfuls of sugar instead of one. Breakfast cocoa. Walter Baker & Company's breakfast cocoa is powdered so fine that it can be dissolved by pouring boiling water on it. For this reason it is often prepared at the table. A small teaspoonful of the powder is put in the cup with a teaspoonful of sugar. On this is poured two thirds of a cup of boiling water, and milk or cream is added to suit the individual taste. This is very convenient, but cocoa is not nearly so good when prepared in this manner as when it is boiled. For six cupfuls of cocoa use two tablespoonfuls of the powder, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, half a pint of boiling water, and a pint and a half of milk. Put the milk on the stove in the double boiler. Put the cocoa and sugar in the saucepan, and gradually pour the hot water upon them, stirring all the time. Place the saucepan on the fire, and stir until the contents boil. Let this mixture boil for five minutes, then add the boiling milk, and serve. A gill of cream is a great addition to this cocoa. Sculpted milk may be used in place of boiled milk, if preferred. For flavoring a few grains of salt, and half a teaspoonful of vanilla extract may be added. End of Selections from Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes by Miss Maria Parloa, specially prepared for Walter Baker and Company, Limited. Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address in Washington D.C. Wednesday, March 4th, 1801. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Friends and fellow citizens, called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow citizens, which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks, for the favor with which they have been pleased to look towards me. To declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentments, which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my power so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye. When I contemplate these transcendent objects and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair, did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our constitution, I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world. During the contest of opinion through which we have passed, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think. But this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind the sacred principle that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable, that the minority possess their equal rights which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression. Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the antagonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore, that this should be more felt and feared by some and less than others and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this union or to change its Republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. So, indeed, that some honest men fear that a Republican government cannot be strong, that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot in the full tide of successful experiment abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe that the only one where every man at the call of law would fly to the standard of the law and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes, it is said that a man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe, too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others, possessing a chosen country with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude and the love of man. Acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness thereafter. With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one more thing, fellow citizens. A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. About to enter, fellow citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political. Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. The support of the state governments and all their rights as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and assurous bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies. The preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad. A jealous care of the right of election by the people. A mild and safe corrective of abuses which are locked by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided. Absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority. The vital principle of republics. From which is no appeal but to force. The vital principle and immediate parent of despotism. A well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them. The supremacy of the civil over the military authority. Economic and the public expense that labor may be lightly burdened. The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith. Encouragement of agriculture and of commerce as its handmade. The diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith. The text of civic instruction. The touchstone by which to try the services of those who we trust. And should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety. I repair then fellow citizens to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough and subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this greatest of all I have learned to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you've reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character whose preeminent services has entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defective judgment. When right I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command the view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors which will never be intentional and your support against the errors of others who may condemn what they would not have seen in all of its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all. Relying then on the patronage of your good will I advance with obedience to the work ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make and made that infinite power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity. End Thomas Jefferson first inaugural address read by ML Cohen mojo move 411.com Cleveland Ohio September 2007