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Dessert

Cream Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made by boiling sugar and milk, then adding vanilla and melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Cream Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil sugar and milk for three minutes.

  2. Pour into a bowl and beat until cool enough to spread on cake.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

Finish and spread

  1. Melt the chocolate and spread it on the cream icing.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the milk and sets the icing's sweetness and body as it cools.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess, helping the sugar dissolve into a spreadable icing.
Cake chocolate
Adds the main chocolate flavor and richness to the icing.
Vanilla extract
Adds a rounded aroma that softens the sweetness and deepens the chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Beat while the sugar mixture cools. Beating the boiled sugar and milk as it cools encourages small sugar crystals, which give a smooth, spreadable icing. Beating too early or too late can leave it grainy or hard to spread.

“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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