Crème pâtissière au chocolat et au café
Chocolate Part 2: the 18th century, health, sex & sensuality, and a bit of innovation
Take chocolate to make the meanest company seem good to you. - Madame de Sévigné, letter to her daughter 15 January 1672
“Chocolate is a drink that will always be the subject of dispute.” A statement so modern, but this was written in 1782, so rightly claimed by Dr. Nicolas Didelot in Avis aux personnes qui font usage des eaux de Plombières, ou Traité des eaux minérales (Notice to persons using the waters of Plombières or treated mineral waters). “Any composition,” he continued, “involving several drugs will never satisfy everyone. One wants musk in the chocolate; another doesn’t even want vanilla; one likes it peppery; another likes it sweet; in a word, one can say that the composition of chocolate is a creation of the mind; it is only deemed perfect by its creator.”
(find Part 1 of chocolate’s history of France - the 17th century - by clicking here)
The dawn of the 18th century finds us pretty much where we were at the end of the 17th century where chocolate is concerned. Chocolate was still considered “exotic”, the cost still so exorbitant that it continued to be a “product of luxury, pleasure, and prestige,” the privilege of the upper class and the royal court. And still primarily consumed as a beverage.
But slowly, slowly it is moving forward.
At the close of the 17th century, The Dictionary of the Academy Française (dedicated to the King in 1694) still seems to speak of chocolate as a product not well known: Chocolate or Chocolat; a composition made from cocoa, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and various aromatics, which is then dissolved in boiling water to make a beverage that has made its way from the West Indies to Europe. An entry for chocolatière describes a small vase in silver, copper, terra cotta, etc to prepare chocolate.
Just a few years later, the knowledge and use of chocolate seems to have expanded.
Le Dictionnaire François edition of 1706 has a much lengthier description of chocolate including flavoring ingredients, how to prepare it, and its health benefits, including the suggestion that taking 3 cups a day is nourishing. Along with the entry for chocolatière, the service “vase”, there is also an entry for cabaret: a small, flat cabinet on which to place cups, saucers, sugar bowl, spoons for serving coffee, tea, or chocolate. The word chocolatier has also been added, defined as “one who sells only chocolate (ex. a rich chocolatier).” And, more importantly, chocolate is now also defined as “a small kind of delicate pastry in which there is chocolate.”
The same year, at the beginning of this new century, Dr. Louis Lémery, chemist and Docteur Régent en la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, wrote Traité des Aliments, a surprisingly advanced treatise on the foods one eats or drinks and how each affects the body, health, and longevity. He dedicates a chapter to chocolate, evidently extremely appreciative of this food. Chocolate, he advises, “must be selected newly made… chocolate is extremely nourishing (healthy), fortifying, restorative, repairs exhausted energy and gives strength and vigor, softens harsh or bad moods, cuts the fumes (the effects) of wine, aids digestion, it excites the “passions of Venus”, and resists the malignancy of bad moods.” He particularly recommends chocolate “during cold weather, for the elderly, for people with a cold and phlegmatic temperament, those with digestive problems due to a weak stomach, although,” he warns, “young people with a hot and sickly temperament, who already suffer from wild mood swings, should abstain from chocolate or use it soberly, in moderation.”
Chocolate is still very much considered a medicine, a drug, a pharmaceutical treatment, yet we now see it being written about as a food, albeit a food with extraordinary health benefits.
Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières, Count of Caylus published Histoire naturelle du cacao et du sucre, divisée en deux traités qui contiennent plusieurs faits nouveaux, & beaucoup d'observations également curieuses & utiles (Natural history of cocoa and sugar divided into two treatises which contains several new facts and many equally curious and useful observations) writing: “chocolate is extremely nutritious, an ounce of cocoa containing as much nourishing oils as a pound of beef and no other aliment is able to supply a more abundantly healthy food. Cocoa has no quality that is excessive or harmful.” He spends many pages extolling the digestive value of cocoa, how absolutely easy it is to digest, even aiding the digestion of other foods if drunk at the end of a large meal. Not only, Caylus explains, will cocoa preserve one's health and prolong one’s life, but it has a huge impact on the spirits: for example, “an extremely fatigued person after long and difficult bodily exertion or a violent restraint of mind, upon taking a good cup of chocolate will feel the effects almost immediately of a renewed force.”
He recommends taking cocoa or chocolate as, of course, a beverage sweetened and perfumed with vanilla and cinnamon, sometimes with pepper and ginger. But he introduces cacao en confiture: cocoa cooked into a syrup then infused with lemon peel and cinnamon creating a thickened jam-like spread.
And, of course, de Tubières includes a chapter on chocolate’s use in medicine (rather than as a medicine itself): “because of the properties in chocolate as well as the flavor, especially when sweetened, medicines mixed with chocolate are more effective in fighting things like stomach fevers than broth” as it makes the medicine more agreeable to the patient who will be more likely to take the treatment. He writes that doctors must ”find a way of presenting remedies (medicines) to patients in a pleasant form and in a known taste; sick patients have enough of their illnesses and diseases without adding to their troubles the disgust of the taste of their remedies (medicines).”
La Cuisine de Santé (Healthy Cooking) written in 1790 by Jourdan Lecointe - and here we thought health diets were something of our modern days! - highly recommends drinking chocolate for “skinny people and convalescents” if it is made “au fourneau de santé” which might be one of the first ovens that keeps the heat at a moderate temperature, evidently rendering food healthier. He writes only about chocolate as a beverage. He offers one recipe for a chocolate cream prepared with “un bon chocolat de santé”
The 18th century saw several “health” books written, aimed specifically at young women of marrying age, in which chocolate is advised as the drug of choice to aid fertility. M. de Lignac penned De l'homme et de la femme considérés physiquement dans l'état du mariage (Of man and woman considered physically in the state of marriage), published in 1772, in which he claims “chocolate is a food that immediately nourishes and fortifies; it contributes, by these two qualities, to ‘fertilize the pleasures of marriage, and it is particularly appropriate for sluggish people requiring stimulation.’” De Lignac refers to a case in which a young woman, unwell and sterile, began drinking chocolate to please her husband, following which - her drinking it regularly - she eventually gave birth to several children.
A few years later in 1776, Dr. Jean-André Venel wrote Essai sur la santé et l'éducation médicinale des filles destinées au mariage (Essay on the health and medicinal education of girls destined for marriage). The author frowns upon coffee, claiming that drinking coffee is particularly harmful to young women in that it irritates the nerves and actively agitates the blood; coffee “is dangerous for pregnant women in that it threatens miscarriage and excites hemorrhages…. Daily use of this beverage often hastens their periods and renders this evacuation too abundant.” Chocolate, on the other hand, agrees with young women, “especially those with weak, pale, and lethargic complexions; it’s a restorative and fortifier.” He then quotes de Lignac’s book and the claim that chocolate works against sterility caused by weakness and exhaustion.
Denis Diderot throws a bit of cold water on the fire when he questions chocolate’s overuse in his influential Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Encyclopedia or Reasoned Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts) published between 1751 and 1772. He states unequivocally that “chocolate deserves neither all the good nor all the bad that is claimed; this kind of food gradually becomes less interesting with habit”. He admits (almost grudgingly, it seems) that chocolate is a tonic, awakening sluggish, listless forces, lifting one’s mood and fortifying one’s health, due to properties in the cocoa, sugar, and vanilla used to make it. If, he stresses, taken in moderation. Overuse (if drunken daily) dulls these effects. “While the scent is agreeable and the flavor pronounced, rendering chocolate highly recommendable, it excites excessively, thus its use has become less frequent.” Or so he thinks. “Chocolate’s reputation for ‘exciting excessively’ has long been the reason for keeping it out of the hands of young people and, more recently, young pregnant women.”
Chefs are tentatively but assuredly understanding how chocolate can be used in foods other than simply as a beverage and cookbooks are reflecting these culinary advances. We already saw François Massialot add recipes with each new edition of his 2 cookbooks, Le Cuisinier roïal et bourgeois and Nouvelle Instruction pour les confitures, les liqueurs, et les fruits, between his 1691 and 1698 editions for the first and the 1698 and 1715 editions for the latter. For the 1722 edition of the now-titled Le Nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois, Massialot includes a recipe for a chocolate tourte or tart, a pâte feuilletée crust filled with chocolate pastry cream (he instructs one taste the cream to make sure it is tasty), a decorative trellis in the puff pastry is arranged on top, the tart is then baked; once baked and hot from the oven, the tart is then dusted with powdered sugar then quickly caramelized with a “hot shovel”. And served hot. He has a recipe for a baked chocolate almond cream, a chocolate “crème veloutée”, a chocolate cream cooked in a bain-marie to which rennet is added to curdle the cream which is served with a pinch of daffodil leaves or violets, as well as a rissole de chocolat, a turnover-type pastry, quite a common dessert sans le chocolat since medieval times, his filled with a chocolate pastry cream spiced with cinnamon, candied lime peel, and orange flower water.
Joseph Menon, prolific cookbook author, combined the medical or health advantages of chocolate along with the recipes in his 1750 La Science du Maître d'Hôtel Confiseur, The Science of the Master Confectioner. He has a recipe for chocolate ice cream, beating egg yolks into melted chocolate (melted in a bit of water) to which is added cream and sugar; “when all is melted, well combined and smooth, chill the mixture, beat until it is thick and foamy - if it doesn’t mousse up, adding egg whites can help, then chill again. Serve in chilled goblets.” He also makes a chilled chocolate “fromage glacé” and a chocolate mousse, along with the by now fairly common selection of chocolate massepains, dragées, pastilles, and cannelons. Menon includes a section on chocolate itself, explaining what it is, how it is made, and how to select good chocolate - mentioning that it is very delicious and marries well with the flavor of vanilla which is often added to the composition. “It is very nourishing, helps digestion, fortifies the stomach, suppresses the fumes of wine (conceals the effects of too much wine), is suitable for the elderly and those with digestive difficulties, but harmful to those with overall poor health or weak nerves.”
Joseph Gilliers, chef, pastry chef, and distiller to Stanislas Leszczynski, father of Marie Leszczyńska, Queen of France, and father-in-law of Louis XV, wrote the Le Cannaméliste Français in 1751 - a cannaméliste was a confiseur or confectioner, at that time it signified primarily the person who candied fruits and flowers, worked with sugar, and made liqueurs. He has a lengthy text about cocoa and chocolate and how to turn one into the other from the bean to a sweetened paste or tablet used then for beverages, cookies, and chocolate for decoration and glazes.
Les dons de Comus, ou l'Art de la cuisine, réduit en pratique (The Gifts of Comus or the Art of Cooking, reduced to practice) by François Marin is considered one of the most important cookbooks of the 18th century - growing from a single volume in 1739 to 3 volumes by 1742 including almost 2,300 different recipes - yet his 1758 version contains only 3 recipes containing chocolate: a tourte de chocolat with a chocolate pastry cream base like Massialot, rissoles au chocolat but his are fried, and simple chocolate creams, none of which are adorned with spices or flavorings.
The Dictionnaire portatif de cuisine, d'office et de distillation - a portable book on cooking, service, and distilling - from 1767, another book mixing cooking, science, and medicine, suddenly has chocolate used in a multitude of confections, from ices and ice creams to all sorts of candies, to a variety of cream desserts (fromage, mousse), followed by a section on “Medicinal Observation” which include chocolate’s use for all sorts of stomach problems, as is common by now, but also claims that chocolate will help reduce or cure migraines, phlegm, perversion, and insomnia. Yes, perversion. And insomnia. Regular use of chocolate, the book explains, harms young people, but is good for the elderly and adults who lead a sedentary life.
But while recipe development moved at a rather slow pace, chocolate production on a large scale took off and never looked back. The invention of a high, horizontal, charcoal-heated table by Dubuisson in 1732 made it possible to work standing up rather than kneeling on the ground, making the work of grinding the cocoa into paste faster and less tiring; a man could produce 6 kg of chocolate a day. In 1778, Doret invented a hydraulic machine for grinding the cocoa beans into paste, allowing for an even greater and larger production of chocolate. 1780 saw the first mechanized production in Bayonne.
France’s first official chocolate factory, Chocolat Lombarts, opened in 1760 followed by La Compagnie des Chocolats et des Thés Pelletier & Cie in 1770, the first industrial enterprise. Henri Duthu, a pharmacist from Dijon, opened Comptoir des Thés et Chocolats in Paris in 1770, as well, which included a chocolate-making workshop. He eventually would produce up to 30 pounds of chocolate a day.
As we move towards the end of the century, more and more chocolate makers and chocolate shops are opening: the 1780 Tablettes royales de renommée, a directory of the principal factories, manufactures, and houses of commerce (grocery shops and drugstores) of Paris “and other cities in the kingdom” put together by Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau and the Society of Merchants now lists 10 addresses selling or making chocolate in the capital city including Barrera, rue Saint-Honoré “exclusively for the ladies, just like the cafés where excellent chocolate is served at all hours, prepared with vanilla or without” and Millerand, Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, manufacturer of chocolate by privilege of S. A. S. Monseigneur le prince de Condé, creator of a new manner of preparing “health chocolate” (chocolat de santé) approved by the Royal Society of Medicine. One also finds Meunier on rue Sartine, maker of chocolate in the Spanish, Italian, and French styles as well as health chocolate and a name that will be associated with one of France’s first “industrialized” (large-scale) chocolate manufacturers and one of France’s largest, most well-known names in the country’s history of chocolate.
But, ah, what about our clergy in all of this? Have they continued to accept and enjoy chocolate as a permitted nourishing beverage or do some still consider it a “violent inflamer of passions”? The 1783 Réglemens de la communauté de MM. les prêtres, desservans la paroisse de Saint-Sulpice de Paris (Regulations of the community of priests serving the parish of Saint-Sulpice in Paris) clearly states “we also look down upon eating in one’s room, unless one is ill, or consuming the superfluous liquors that the sensuality of the century has introduced, such as ratafia, chocolate, coffee, tea, or even less, tobacco, which is wholly indecent for people who are always at the altar or the confessional and at other sacred functions. Nevertheless, if someone has a real health need for one of these things, at the recommendation of a physician, it could be allowed provided that it was consumed in private and without being seen.” So, chocolate is now viewed as a superfluous liquor consumed in sensuality by indecent people, unless, of course, it is prescribed for medicinal reasons when it should then be taken in private. Of course.
Crème pâtissière or pastry cream 3 ways: vanilla, coffee, and chocolate
By the 17th and 18th centuries, pastry cream along with variations on this type of milk/cream, sugar, egg/egg yolk confection was commonly found in cookbooks. A basic recipe was first given followed by instructions on how to create flavor variations, always including coffee and chocolate.
Use these half batches of pastry cream, once chilled, to fill choux puffs (my recipe found here).
For the Vanilla Crème Pâtissière or Pastry Cream (half batch)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup (225 ml) whole milk (I often use low fat)
6 tablespoons (100 grams) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons (30 grams) unsalted butter (at room temperature makes it easier)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Dissolve the cornstarch in ¼ cup of the milk; whisk until smooth and there are no lumps.
Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan. Bring just to a boil then remove from the heat.
Vigorously whisk the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture in a large heat proof mixing bowl. Pour ⅓ (a third) of the hot milk into the egg mixture in a slow, steady stream, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.
Add the rest of the hot milk to the egg mixture then return all of it back into the pot and return to a medium-low to medium heat.
Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes just to a boil. Immediately remove from the heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.
Pour the pastry cream into a heat proof pyrex or stainless steel bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.
For Chocolate Pastry Cream (half batch)
Bring ¼ cup (about 50 ml) of the milk to a boil in a small pan; remove from heat and stir in 3 ounces (about 80 grams) finely chopped semisweet chocolate; mix until smooth. Whisk into the pastry cream when you add the butter and vanilla.
For Coffee Pastry Cream ((half batch)
Dissolve 1 ½ teaspoons instant espresso powder in 1 ½ teaspoons boiling water. Whisk into the pastry cream with the butter and vanilla.
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Oh I do love Menon! We used his cookbook often at the Governors Palace in Williamsburg, since the inventory for Ld Botetourt listed it.
We've made the chocolate tart a few times for special occasions. Did you know that there is some evidence that the British officers ate all their chocolate before the surrender at Yorktown? Not going to give it to those filthy rebels!!
A lovely read, as always.
Lovely, the history and artwork are impressive, Thank you also for the variety of pastry cream recipes!