How Changing Techniques and Technology Affected Chocolate Recipes
With innovations in home kitchen and industrial appliances came developments in the chocolate bar and how it was used in recipes by home cooks. In the early 1900s, as seen in the 1902 pamphlet "100 Recipes with Cream of Pure Chocolate," recipes used measurements such as a "heaping spoonful" or "tea cup" to describe the amount of cocoa powder that should be used. This pamphlet noted that customers were angered by the resultingly inconsistent chocolate products produced by the recipes and Robert's Cream of Chocolate company corrected this by elaborating that a "heaping spoonful" or "cup" be determined by piling as much cocoa powder as possible onto the spoon or tea cup, which suggests that standard baking measurement utensils were not yet popular among home bakers. Furthermore, chocolate baked goods of this time likely varied in chocolate-iness, depending on the home bakers estimations of ingredient quantities. By 1928, as seen in the pamphlet "Famous Recipes for Baker's Chocolate and Breakfast Cocoa," standard measurements and the practice of "leveling" measured ingredients were more common. The authors of this Walter Baker & Co. pamphlet emphasize the importance of these practices as a way to ensure consistent high-quality chocolate products are produced by the recipes and that incongruencies were not due to the home baker's own guesswork of ingredient amounts.
New kitchen innovations noted in the pamphlet, like the addition of oven regulators and oven thermometers, make it easier to moderate and determine the exact temperature of ovens. As seen in the pamphlet, some recipes now included oven temperatures as well as general heat settings (such as a "slow" cooler oven vs a "fast" or "quick" high temperature oven). This may have been a cause for the expansion of new types of cake and novel recipes for eclairs, soufflés, and cookies that came out of the 1920s. Additionally, the pamphlet recommends using a sugar thermometer for making candies and many candy recipes include the exact temperatures of intermediate steps necessary for achieving the intended chocolate sweetness. This innovation in candy making technology and practice may have allowed for the variety of "hard-ball," "soft-ball" and "brittle" candies not seen in earlier chocolate pamphlets.
By the late 1940s, both general heat settings and specific temperatures were used in all chocolate recipes, as seen in 1949's "Hershey's Recipes" pamphlet. Additionally, new specifications of how Hershey's chocolate should be handled in recipes to achieve the best products were. For example, Hershey's described that their new recipe allows for rapid melting allows home cooks to melt chocolate bars whole, rather than having to cut them up first as was common practice in the past. Furthermore, Hershey's describes the best method for melting chocolate which is still used today: the double boiler. Rather than melting chocolate in a pan directly oven a heat source, which could lead to scorching or distasteful separation of the fat from the cocoa solids, Hershey encourages home cooks to melt chocolate using the indirect heat of boiling water, which is more consistent and cooler than direct heat. Hershey insists this method is superior and after the 1940s, it is referenced in many other chocolate recipes as the preferred method for using solid baking chocolate to make baked goods. Hershey's also describes how to substitute baking cocoa for solid baking chocolate which was not seen in chocolate pamphlets before. These modern chocolate techniques helped home bakers improve the flavor, texture, and ease of using chocolate in baking.
Finally, by the mid-1970s, chocolate recipes began to only use specific temperatures and terms like "slow" and "quick" ovens faded out. This likely is a sign of the growing access of home bakers to ovens with precise temperature control, which would have allowed for increased quality and replicability of chocolate recipes. By 1988, as seen in "Hershey's Chocolate Classics," the option of using a microwave to melt chocolate for recipes was also included, as were specifications for proper storing of chocolate to prevent flavor loss and the separation of the cocoa fat and butter with age, called "blooming." All in all, innovations in oven temperature control and the popularization of techniques for improved preparation of chocolate in recipes allowed for the improved quality of recipes utilizing chocolate and ease of preparation for the home baker.