Customer Reviews

Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes

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I just downloaded this book on my kindle, mostly in response to other reviews.

This is definitely NOT a book for modern cooking or baking. The historical facts on chocolate are quaint and interesting, but the measurements given (such as "gills" of water) are not common cooking terms these days. Some of the recipes call for raw egg whites that are not safe to eat, so you'd have to substitute meringue powder. I have a lot of other modern cookbooks which have updated recipes for most of the items, so if you are an experienced cook you'll recognize them right away and know how to proceed. If you are not familiar with a particular recipe, I'd recommend looking up on line and going from there.

Having read it, I think that this book is a good freebie for "foodies". It seems to be an advertising tool for Walter Baker and Co. chocolate (it's mentioned continually throughout the book) but you get some insight on early 20th century kitchen practices and tastes. I probably won't try to make anything straight from this book as it's written. Just read it for a different take on history. It makes me imagine how hard my great-grandmother had to work in her kitchen!!

Though I assumed this to be an older cookbook, I still found the format to be challenging to use. I'm sure it is useable for those who have the patience and time to sort out the ingredients from within the text, but for myself I found it too cumbersome a style for this spoiled modern cookbook reader. I hope this helps you decide if you want to download the book and if you are one of the patient types please let me know how you did it!

This book begins with a brief history of chocolate so that may be of interest to you. Then it is mostly filled with recipes that the modern cook will have trouble with in today's times. Like for instance who measures flour by the pint? Who cooks in a moderately hot oven? If placing something over a fire, would that be a gas burner? How do you get an entire box of gelatine? Now it is sold in envelopes. What is "soluble" chocolate? I find most of the recipes sound delicious but making them would be quite the effort. First you'd need to write out the recipe again with all the ingredients listed first and the instructions after. In this book the recipes are all written in an old-fashioned style that won't be appreciated by cooks who want something fast to make. If you do read this book do it only for the pleasure that a foodie would get from reading about cooking.

~The Rebecca Review

I bought this book along with 2 others and I don't care much for this one either.