Archives Test Kitchen: Chocolate in the Archives!

The purpose of The Compass Rose is to raise awareness of Special Collections' resources and to foster the use of these resources. The blog series also reports significant new programs, initiatives, and acquisitions of Special Collections.     

Welcome to Archives Test Kitchen, a blog series that brings history and archives to life with sometimes delicious, sometimes hilarious results! Our team at Special Collections is dedicated to testing out historic recipes to highlight culinary treasures within our collections. 

This week, Outreach & Instruction Archivist Evan Spencer attempts to recreate chocolate cake recipes from the past (and fails at least once!).

Lead Image: Gladys Francisco Walker frosts a cake, September 21, 1941, AR406-6 Fort Worth Star Telegram Collection (Link)

Earlier this month, Special Collections hosted "Chocolate in the Archives," an event that coupled history, archival materials, and learning with taste-tests of delicious recipes from the past! Our speaker, Dr. Amy Tigner, delivered an incredible talk about the history of chocolate from pre-European contact up through the present. 

Dr. Tigner's talk focused on the development of the chocolate we know and love today. Did you know that chocolate was originally only served in liquid form? The solid bars we're familiar with today weren't invented until the 19th Century. But what did chocolate taste like before then?

If you attended our event, you actually got to taste chocolate as it first appeared in Europe in the 17th Century. To my palette, it was similar to a modern Mexican hot chocolate - just much more bitter and watery than the modern product. 

In order to create a successful event - we wanted to provide multiple historic chocolate tasting experiences. When you're inviting people to taste history, why not give them multiple eras and styles to choose from?!

Chocolate IN the archives

Believe it or not, people have loved chocolate for a long time! When searching Special Collections' holdings for chocolate, many different areas of the collection come up. First, there's the incredible Mexican War era letters from Dr. Grayson Prevost declaring his love for chocolate (my personal favorite quote is him describing a meal at a Mexican house, "where I drank chocolate and ate tortillas til I made myself sick."). Then there are commercial photographs from DFW-based companies in the 1900s, descriptions of Cacao in our copy of John Ogilby's America (published in 1671), and cookbooks, many of which contain chocolate recipes!

After looking through several cookbooks, I settled on the Cook Book of Tested Recipes, compiled by the Arlington Garden Club in 1936. 

Four-in-one Tea Dainties

My first attempt from the Arlington Garden Club's 1936 Cook Book was an uncredited recipe for Four-in-one tea dainties. The base cake recipe was meant to be split into four different batters and flavored four ways - but since I was only interested in chocolate for this event, I skipped the other three and decided to make four batches of "Chocolate Strips."

Very early on in the process, I noticed that something seemed off with the recipe. I was shocked that batter called for 2.5 cups of flour to only 1 egg and 0.5 cups of milk. The liquid-to-solid ratio in some modern chocolate cake recipes is more like 2 cups flour, 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, and some additional liquid like vegetable oil.

Nevertheless, I continued baking! 

The batter got thicker and thicker. Adding in liquid chocolate didn't help, either. I was stuck with a batter that had the consistency of very thick cake frosting. 

Not one to give up without a taste test, I spread some of the mixture into an 8x8 pan and baked it.

I wish I could tell you that the end result proved me wrong and made the whole endeavor worth it... but it absolutely did not! What came out of my oven that afternoon was nothing short of awful - the flavor lacked any real chocolate and the orange rind was totally lost. The texture was even worse - somehow both dense AND powdery. It fell apart when you bit it, but created a sort of vaguely chocolatey glue when chewed. The only saving grace was getting a walnut in your bite to take you away from the cake momentarily.

Attempt #2: Mahagony Cake

Needless to say, I absolutely couldn't bring myself to serve this cake at an event! So I went back to the Cook Book and located a second recipe I had seen in my previous search. This time, I went with Mrs. C. D. Mitchell's recipe for "Mahagony Cake".

Mrs. Mitchell's recipe contained much more familiar proportions, but still presented me with some challenges. First, what did she mean by "Sweet Milk", and second, what is a "small cake of Baker's Chocolate"?

For the first challenge, some quick research let me know that "sweet milk" was the early baker's notation for using unspoiled milk (yes... some cake recipes call for sour milk...). 

For the second, I struggled for a bit. I learned quickly that Baker's Chocolate used to be sold in 8 oz packages with 1 oz squares portioned out. However, 6 oz (3/4 of a "cake") seemed like too much chocolate, and 0.75 oz (3/4 of a square) seemed like not enough! Luckily, I was able to find an ad for a smaller portion of Baker's Chocolate - a 4 oz bar - being sold in the 1930s. So I presumed that is what Mrs. Mitchell meant by a "small cake" and went with 3 oz of chocolate in the cake and 1 oz in the filling/frosting.

The other challenge with the Mahagony Cake recipe is that it includes no instructions whatsoever. I think this is because most of the target audience for this cookbook would know how to put together a basic cake recipe.

But in case you are not reading this in the 1930s... here's what I did!

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together 2 cups sugar and 3/4 cup butter (I opted for salted butter here, since there's no salt added to the cake)
3. Add 1 egg and 2 egg whites along with 1 tsp vanilla, mixing until combined
4. Sift together 3 cups flour and 1 tbsp baking powder, adding a little at a time to the mixture, alternating with splashes of milk (1 cup total).
5. Melt 3 oz chocolate (I used 88% dark chocolate) in water (stir WELL), then add slowly to the batter.
6. Pour into baking vessel (I used two 9" cake pans)
7. Bake (mine took 55 minutes, but I started checking it at 35 minutes).

For the frosting, I was never able to figure out what Mrs. Mitchell meant by "rolled", but I did sift the confectioners' sugar. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Sift 1lb of confectioners' sugar, then cream together with 0.5 cups salted butter.
2. Mix in the yolks of 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla extract
3. Melt 1 oz chocolate in 5 tbsp of hot coffee, add to the mixture

The Results

As you can see, this cake looks a lot more like cake! 

First of all, kudos to Mrs. Mitchell. The cake is delicious - chocolatey without being overly sweet, soft and chewy without being too tough. I was most worried about the ratio of chocolate, but my educated guess seems to have been right! I was also concerned about adding coffee in the frosting (I am more of a tea guy, myself), but it served the same purpose as modern recipes that have you add espresso powder to cocoa powder in baking - it amplified the chocolate flavor without imparting too much coffee. 

After successfully making this test bake at home, I decided to make another batch to bring for the Chocolate in the Archives event! The feedback was nearly unanimous: Mrs. Mitchell had created a fantastic and timeless recipe. Guests of all ages commented on the flavor of the cake - chocolatey but not too sweet, and overall delicious. Of the 60+ people who tried a small piece, only one had a slightly negative thing to say (the cake was a little dense for their liking). 

So if you're ever looking for a chocolate cake recipe that's also a blast from the past, I highly recommend giving Mrs. Mitchell's Mahagony Cake a try!