The New York Chocolate School

Who wouldn't want to go to class at the New York Chocolate School? The School was run by restauranteur and confectioner Henri Maillard, and was located at 114 West 25th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues, approximately where a garage stands today). This was also the building in which Maillard had his confectionary factory.

Henri Maillard had been famous for his chocolates and confections since 1848, in which year he arrived in New York; he had served his creations to Lincoln in the White House and had taken a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1878. At this point I want to direct you over to Victualling, where there is an excellent post about Maillard's career. Here is a link to a photograph of his exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. And in 1889, at the Paris Exposition, he displayed, in the entrance hall, "a Venus de Millo [sic] of the weight of 900 kilograms moulded in chocolate...One may remark that greedy visitors or those who doubted that it is true chocolate, have scratched the pedestal of this extraordinary statue."*

Moses King writes about this unusual school in his 1892 King's Handbook of New York City: 

Here free lessons are given on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons, from October to June, in the art of making a cup of chocolate or cocoa, so that these delicious and nutritive beverages may be served in their perfection. [p.268]

By the 1890s, there were some brands of instant hot chocolate on the market (such as Cadbury's in Britain - I am not sure what there was available in New York). Hot chocolate has a long history, which is not the focus of this post - here is a good place to start if you want to delve into historic cocoa.

Maillard's version of the drink was sure to be as grand as his chocolate Venus de Milo. No instant powder for him! Fortunately, Maillard's luxurious recipe has been preserved by Mrs. B.C. Howard in her Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen (although if she truly was in a Maryland kitchen for that long, I don't know how she got M. Maillard's recipe):  

To Prepare Chocolate (Henry Maillard) 

Each half pound is divided into six pieces. Each piece is the quantity for a cup.

Take a tin pan and pour in half a glass of warm water; break the chocolate in small pieces and let it dissolve in the pan, stirring it over a bright fire. When the chocolate is dissolved, mix with it a cupful of milk, and stir it again over the fire until it boils about three or four minutes. Then the chocolate is done and perfect.

It is very necessary it should boil, to be good. It can be prepared also with cold water and cold milk, but it takes, of course, a little more time to get it to boil. **

This sounds quite rich, but also fairly simple as far as recipes go. Perhaps Maillard taught his pupils about other things one could make with chocolate. In any case, the New York Chocolate School was probably excellent publicity for his restaurant and confectionery.

The picture of Henry Maillard's chocolate factory, for sale at the New York Times Store, is taken from there (they said personal use was all right, and this is that, at least for now). The Little Lord Fauntleroy boy swigging Cadbury's instant cocoa circa 1890 (Maillard would not approve!) is from Vintage Ad Browser. The restaurant picture is from Victualling. I wish that there was a picture of the actual School, but I was unable to find one.

*Bertels, C.H. Universal Exhibition Paris 1889 (reprinted 2009), p. 84.
**Howard, Mrs. B.C. Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen (1881), p. 351.