In search of the earliest chocolate cookies

 Several years ago I began a review of historical cookbooks for cookie or biscuit recipes. Because the concept of cookies and biscuits has evolved over time I included columns in my spreadsheet for those that were rolled out, drop cookies, bar cookies (tray bakes), molded or shaped cookies, sandwich cookies, refrigerator cookies, and twice baked cookies - like biscotti.  To date my spreadsheet for this project includes 898 sources from 1467-1930.

I examined spreadsheet entries for English-language cookbooks from 1608 through 1875. The start date was optimistic, I was fairly sure there wouldn’t be any chocolate cookies that early. I actually didn’t expect to find any relevant recipes until the 1700s, so it was surprising to find a recipe for chocolate puffs in Mary Tillinghast’s 1681 book, The True Way of Preserving and Candying. 

Throughout the 18th Century there are a number of recipes for chocolate puffs, biskets, or biscuits that primarily use beaten egg whites, chocolate, and sugar. These are spooned onto baking paper and baked in a slow oven. Sometimes sugar is sprinkled on the paper first. Many of these recipes appear word-for-word in multiple books, typical of the era when it was common to copy recipes from other work verbatim. In 1769 Elizabeth Raffald published her own version of these puffs in The Experienced English Housekeeper.

The next chocolate biscuit that is rolled and not dropped appears in 1770 in Borella’s book The Court and Country Confectioner.   Borella calls for blanched and ground almonds instead of flour to make a dough that is stiff enough to roll out.

Another unique approach comes in 1790 in Frederick Nutt’s book The Complete Confectioner; or, The Whole Art of Confectionary. Instead of finely grating the chocolate to mix in with the eggs and sugar, Nutt recommends heating the chocolate until warm to soften it first. The dough is shaped by rolling it into balls before placing on the baking paper.

Flour and/or ground nuts are more commonly used in chocolate cookies in the early to mid-19th century. This 1818 chocolate biscuit recipe from 1818 The Universal Receipt Book by Priscilla Homespun is typical. Screen cap

Through the middle to late 19th century cookbooks begin to include chocolate in macaroons, jumbles, drop cakes, snaps, and other recipes a bit more familiar to modern cooks. By the end of the century recipes for brownies begin to show up in cookbooks. Next month I'll post about my attempts to recreate a couple of the 18th century recipes.

ETA: in lieu of posting my own experiments, I decided to link to Marissa Nicosia's detailed recreation of a chocolate cookie recipe, Jumballs of Chocolett, from a hand-written 17th hand-written cookbook.