Chocolate Syrup

If you like chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk or to top your ice cream, here's a simple recipe to make your own syrup.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan, bring the water to a boil, mix in and dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and salt, making sure both are mixed in completely. Keep whisking at a moderate pace until the mixture begins to thicken somewhat. Turn off the heat and whisk in the vanilla. The sauce will not be all that thick until it cools completely. Empty into a jar or dish, cover and refrigerate.

WORD HISTORY: 
Syrup-This word is distantly related to "sherbet," an Arabic-derived word borrowed by English from Turkish. The ultimate origin of "syrup" is uncertain, but it goes back to transliterated Arabic "sharab/sarab," which meant, "a drink, a beverage," from a verb, "shariba," which means, "to drink," but for which I have no further history. Latin borrowed the word from Arabic as "siroppus/siropus," by which time one of the medical treatments of those days used thick sweetened fruit juices and herbs as a remedy for some illnesses, presumably intestinal. Latin-based Old French took the word as "sirop," and English borrowed the word from French, initially as "sirup," in the second half of the 1300s and the meaning gradually shifted away from "a remedy" to "a sweet thickened liquid used as a flavoring agent on food." By the way, there are 2 common pronunciations of this word: 1) as if, "sir-up;" 2) as if, "seer-up."