The Duke’s Hot Chocolate
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Total time: 10 minutes
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Hot chocolate holds on the stove for an hour or longer, and can be stored in the refrigerator for 2 days.
This hot chocolate has a pedigree. It dates from 1632 Italy, where the court cook to Bologna’s ruling family, the Bentivoglio dukes, made it the fashion of the day. Scented with allspice, vanilla and orange, this was the end product of one of Italy’s earliest recipes for making chocolate from the cacao bean. Cook Giuseppe Lamma came up with other flavoring options--pack the chocolate in jasmine flowers for several days before melting it, or stir ground ambergris (a secretion from the intestines of the sperm whale - not at all attractive soundng. into the hot drink.
Amber and jasmine notwithstanding, you can experience the chocolate as the ladies at court like it--hot in winter; iced in summer. What a civilized late-night fix. Too bad they didn’t know about marshmallows back then.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (or the seeds scraped from the inside of a whole vanilla bean)
- Generous pinch of salt
- 1/8 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper (optional)
- 1/2 cup sugar, or to taste
- Fine-grated zest of a large orange
- 3 cups water, or half-water, half-milk, or half-water, half-cream
- 10.5 to 12 ounces bittersweet chocolate (Lindt Excellence 70%, Valrhona 71%, Scharffen Berger 70%, Guittard L’Harmonie 72%, or Ghiradelli 70% Extra Bittersweet, in our order of preference), broken up
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Instructions
- In a 3-quart saucepan combine all ingredients except the chocolate. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 2 minutes.
- Pull the pan off the heat, let it sit a few minutes, then whisk in the chocolate until smooth. Taste the chocolate for sweetness and enough allspice. Serve hot.
About The Show
In 1994, acclaimed food writer and cooking teacher Lynne Rossetto Kasper was receiving accolades for her debut book, The Splendid Table, which at that time was the only book to have won both the James Beard and Julia Child Cookbook of the Year awards. Among the many people enchanted by the book was producer and foodie Sally Swift, who thought the time could be right for a radio program on food.
