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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with milk, corn starch, eggs, chocolate, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 custard

  1. Scald 1½ cups milk.

  2. Rub corn starch smooth with remaining milk and add to scalded milk.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for 8 minutes.

Make the chocolate

  1. Melt chocolate over hot water.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and hot water, and stir until smooth.

  3. Add melted chocolate to the cooked mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar, then add unbeaten yolks and continue beating until smooth.

  3. Stir into the cooked mixture.

  4. Cook for 1 minute.

  5. Add vanilla and cool.

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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce's body and creaminess are built on.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as its starch granules swell and gelatinize when heated.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the sauce, while beaten whites add lightness.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and cocoa fat that gives the sauce richness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Cook for 1 minute after stirring in the egg mixture. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce must be hot enough to thicken but not so hot that the eggs curdle or turn grainy.

“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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