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Drink

Chocolate or Cocoa

A hot chocolate beverage made with flour, sugar, salt, chocolate, boiling water, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate or Cocoa

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix together the flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add the chocolate and boiling water.

  3. Stir until dissolved.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil gently for 5 minutes. Stir constantly.

  2. Stir in the boiling milk.

  3. Serve with or without whipped cream.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Starch thickens the drink as it heats, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Chocolate or cocoa
Provides the main chocolate flavour and colour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the drink.

The step that matters

Boil gently and stir constantly. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated, and constant stirring keeps it from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Stirring also prevents lumps from forming as the mixture thickens.

“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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