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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A creamy chocolate sauce made with cream, milk, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream and milk.

  2. Grate the chocolate into the mixture and heat until it reaches a boiling point.

Thicken and finish

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  2. When the sauce thickens, fold in the beaten egg whites and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add vanilla extract for flavor.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate melts into.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and melts smoothly into the warm liquid.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as it heats, and whites add lightness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Adding the yolks off the heat. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so stirring them into a very hot mixture can scramble them into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them thicken the sauce gently and evenly.

“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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