How to Drink Hot Chocolate According to Three Fictional Characters

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How Many People Does It Take To Make A Cup of Cocoa?

Chocolate bars are a rather recent invention, dating back to just 1847 when Fry and Sons launched their solid moulded chocolate. We’ve been drinking the stuff for a lot longer. No surprise then that hot chocolate turns up in various literary classics.

For a long time chocolate was the preserve of the wealthy. Indeed, French royals went mad for the stuff. One of the biggest culprits was Marie Antoinette, who turned up at the French Court in 1770 with a dedicated ‘Personal Chocolate Maker to the Queen’. A bit over the top, we think!

Monseigneur in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities takes it one little bit further – he needs ‘four strong men beside the Cook’. What could they all possibly do? Well:

“One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out.”

Monseigneur is a bit of a drama queen; any fewer and he “might have died“.

 

A Slippery Slope

So that’s how it should be served, but what about the hot chocolate itself? This warm and comforting drink has always been vaunted as a panacea, even as far back as 460 AD. But as Austen’s Sanditon shows us, it’s a slippery slope:

“A large dish of rather weak cocoa every evening agrees with me better than anything”. lt struck her, however, as he poured out this rather weak cocoa, that it came forth in a very fine, dark-coloured stream; and at the same moment, his sisters both crying out, “Oh, Arthur, you get your cocoa stronger and stronger every evening,” with Arthur’s somewhat conscious reply of “Tis rather stronger than it should be tonight”.

Arthur’s cocoa habit almost gets found out as his two sisters note that the cocoa is getting darker and stronger by the day. Do we blame him?

Every Last Drop

Once you’ve made your cocoa (or got five others to make it for you) and it’s nice and strong, how do you make sure you devour every last drop? We rely on Pippi Longstocking and her pet money Mr. Nilsson to show us the light:

“When Mr. Nilsson had emptied his cup he turned it upside down and put it on his head. When Pippi saw that, she did the same, but as she had not drunk quite all her chocolate a little stream ran down her forehead and over her nose. She caught it with her tongue and lapped it all up.
“Waste not, want not,” she said. “Tommy and Annika licked their cups clean before they put them on their heads.”

Poor Tommy and Annika want to participate in Pippi’s anarchic gesture but they are just too well-behaved to go the whole hog. As all the children finish their hot cocoa, we wouldn’t presume to prefer one philosophy over the other.

We wouldn’t be surprised if reading about characters’ chocolate-taking preferences has made you crave a deliciously rich cup of hot chocolate. Head to our perfect hot chocolate recipe to replicate at home!