Hot Chocolate, Yes Please

The Vanderbilts often had a full camp around the Christmas holidays. Photo ca. 1910.

Hot Chocolate, Yes Please

By Robert Engel

Great Camp Sagamore’s Historian

If you stand above Sagamore’s root cellar it’s easy to imagine steaming platters of Truite au Bleu Hollandaise being served in the dining hall. From the cellar you can see the historic hen house (egg yolks,) cow barn (butter,) kitchen garden (parsley,) and the lake (trout.)

The camp itself and its artifacts allow us to piece together stories about the food and drinks that were served to the Vanderbilts and their elegant guests. Alfred Vanderbilt famously “borrowed” chefs from Delmonico’s restaurant in New York. Formal dining on delicate china after a long day in the woods was a surprising treat for first-time guests.

We love it when new information arrives at Great Camp Sagamore. Dawn Pate, a great granddaughter of Alfred and Margaret Vanderbilt, recently shared photos of her wonderful collection of original Sagamore china. And there, displayed in front of one of the platters that might have carried the Truite au Bleu Hollandaise, was a chocolate pot. Sagamore served hot chocolate, bien sûr!

Silver and ceramic chocolate pots began to appear on 17th Century European tables. They are generally smaller than coffee pots and taller than tea pots. A straight handle emerges half-way up the body at a right angle to the spout. A lid allows a thin wooden rod to stir the chocolate just before it is served. The Sagamore pot features pine trees and gilding, a fitting Great Camps metaphor.

Any serious discussion of hot chocolate must naturally begin centuries ago with the Olmec people of current-day Guatemala. They would roast football-sized cocoa bean pods in fire pits, ferment the bitter extracts, and boil it with dried chilies to make a drink that, shall we say, no modern kid would ask for when coming inside after a hard day of sledding.

The Spanish invaded Central America in the 16th century and sent home boatloads of cocoa beans. They omitted the chilies and added cinnamon from the Philippines, nutmeg from Indonesia, and sugar from India. This international elixir was quite rare and very expensive.

The Italians finally added milk. The recipe for cioccolata calda at the Café Florian on Piazza San Marco in Venice is essentially the same today as when the restaurant opened in 1720. They add cornstarch for a “beverage” that will stand your spoon straight up.

The hot chocolate served at Sagamore in Margaret Vanderbilt Emerson’s china chocolate pots was more like the recipe described below. Please note the complete absence of dreary powder packets stirred into hot water. And note as well, mes petits savants, better ingredients make better hot chocolate. ‘Twas always thus.

3 oz. dark chocolate, chopped

1/3 cup sugar or to taste

4 cups whole milk

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Marshmallows or whipped cream topping – optional, but mandatory

In a saucepan, melt chocolate with ½ cup milk over very low heat. Stir in remaining milk, sugar, salt, vanilla. Turn up heat to medium low and heat through but do not boil. Pour into an exquisite antique porcelain chocolate pot and stir gently before pouring into delicate china cups for all the snowy neighborhood kids.

Serving platter and chocolate pot. Sagamore china designed by Margaret Vanderbilt Emerson in the collection of Dawn Pate.