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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

Chocolate cream balls made from egg white, sugar, vanilla, and melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  2. Add cold water and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  3. Gradually stir in enough pulverized sugar to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll the dough into marble-sized balls and let them dry for one hour.

Coat and set

  1. Drop each ball into melted chocolate.

  2. Lift out each ball with a fork and place on greased paper to harden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whipped to a foam that gives the dough its light, airy structure.
Pulverized sugar
Stiffens the liquid into a dough and provides sweetness.
Melted chocolate
Forms the outer coating that hardens around each sugar ball.

The step that matters

Letting the balls dry for one hour. The surface must form a dry skin before dipping; if the balls are still moist, the melted chocolate may soften or thin and fail to set cleanly on the greased paper.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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