As the nights are now beginning to draw in, I’m starting to drink more coco.
I remember drinking coco at a cub scout camp, when I was very much younger. I recall it was hot, brown and tasteless. Not chocolatey at all. So, from that point on, whenever I was offered hot chocolate, I turned it down.
Then in the 1990s, my sister started drinking Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate. I tried it, but found it thick, sickly sweet and too rich. Again, I decided hot chocolate was not for me.
After another decade, I was alone in the house. It was the middle of Winter, and I was a little cold. I wanted a hot drink, but I’d drunk too much coffee that day and had gone off tea.
I opened the kitchen cupboard and searched for something to drink. There was an array of fruit teas, but I wasn’t keen on them. I looked in the herbs and spices section and saw the stock cubes. For a brief moment, I contemplated a cup of salty beef broth. But that felt a little too weird.
My eyes landed on the cocoa powder in the baking section. I reached out. Why not?, I thought.
I put half a teaspoon of cocoa in my favourite cup, boiled the kettle and poured the hot water over the brown powder. After a vigorous stir, I add a splash of milk. It was warming, and not too thick or sweet. It was chocolatey, but not too overpowering.
Eureka! I’ve invented a new drink, I thought with a broad smile on my face. Over the next decade, I introduced this ‘strange brew’ to my friends. All who were amazed at this simple drink. They’d heard of hot chocolate but never this ‘beverage’.
I later found out, this was simply ‘coco’. A staple British drink for decades. So much so, that we have the phrase ‘I should coco’ in our vernacular.
The phrase appears to come from Cockney rhyming slang. An English dialect, on the verge of extinction, which rhymes words to hide their meaning. For example, hair in the slang is called Barnet, from Barnet Fair. Hair and fair rhyme.
Another example, is to have a look at something is called ‘having a butchers’. It comes from the rhyme between butcher’s hook and look. This may come across as very obscure and I think this on purpose. I wonder whether the Cockney’s used this slang to hide their true intentions from outsiders.
The phrase ‘I should coco’ comes from the rhyme between coco and ‘say so’. In context, when someone might ask you to come to the shops, and you wanted to join them, you could respond with the phrase ‘I should coco’.
This was also the title of an album by Supergrass, though none of the members were cockneys.
There appears to be three styles of hot chocolate. One made from melted chocolate and milk. This is extremely rich, very thick and continental.
The more common instant hot chocolate, which is part cocoa powder, powdered milk and sugar. It feels is like drinking a Wispa bar to me. Far too sweet and gloopy.
And then the traditional British coco. This version of hot chocolate dropped out of favour in the 1980s/90s. It is not overpowering, not complex in taste and unassuming. But a great replacement for coffee, if you’ve had too much caffeine during the day.
I hope you might give it a try, hold the steaming cup aloft and toast with the following phrase, ‘I should coco’.
Alexander writes three newsletters. The Tales of Old England Christendom is where he writes about Anglo-Saxon Christianity. The second newsletter is called the Tower of Adam and here he writes about theology. The final one is called Agloria, where he discusses the intersection between culture and theology. You can find out more by clinking the links.
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