SC - Danish cookbook

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

I might as well get started on this list by setting a record straight. It's
what I do compulsively anyway. :-/

Chocolate has always contained fat. Unsweetened baking chocolate tends to
have just a bit of added fat (cocoa butter), and most sweetened chocolates
(especially candies, and coating and couverture chocolate) have even more
fat (either cocoa butter, clarified butterfat, or vegetable oil). Cocoa
powder, on the other hand, has had most of the fat *removed* from it,
leaving it at about 10% fat by weight. Unseparated chocolate is almost half
fat by weight.

As far as I know, only unseparated chocolate was known in period, unless
they might have used some inefficient means of separating out a little of
the cocoa butter. In any case, mostly defatted cocoa powder is more modern.

My main sources for the above info are _Chocolate_Heaven_ by Elizabeth Wolf
Cohen and Valerie Barrett, _On_Food_and_Cooking_ by McGee, the nutritional
information on the several brands of cocoa that I have at the moment, and my
own liveware memory banks.

The other other magic ingredient in chocolate, sugar, was of course already
well known in Europe, and was often used to sweeten drinks. Though I don't
know when it was first used to sweeten chocolate.

Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark

>chocolate was first invented"  (ha ha) it didn't contain that *other* magic 
>ingredient FAT  (cocoa butter? butter fat? ) It was a bitter tasting drink 
>that was at first used medicinally.
>Phillipa Seton

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