Paletas tipo Magnum de vainilla con chocolate caseras

What does “a baño María” mean, and who was María?

A baño María is Spanish for cooking gently over indirect heat — a double boiler in English — and this homemade Magnum-style paleta recipe uses it to melt chocolate without scorching it. The phrase literally means “Mary’s bath,” and it isn’t a random name: it credits María la Judía (“Mary the Jewess”), an alchemist working in Alexandria roughly between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, to whom the technique is traditionally attributed.

María la Judía is considered one of the earliest figures in the history of alchemy and is credited with inventing several pieces of lab equipment still echoed in kitchens today. The name for her gentle-heat technique moved through medieval Latin (balneum Mariae) and French (bain-marie) before settling into Spanish as baño María — the same phrase a home cook reaches for centuries later to keep chocolate from burning.