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Dessert

Chocolate Syrup

A sweet liquid made by mixing cocoa, water, sugar, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a mortar, mix the cocoa with a portion of the water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining water and the sugar, then heat the mixture in a suitable vessel, stirring constantly until it nearly boils.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Finish

  1. Once cool, add the vanilla extract.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

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

Soluble cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour that give the syrup its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, dissolved in water, gives it a thick, pourable texture.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Heat until nearly boiling while stirring constantly. Constant stirring keeps the sugar and cocoa from scorching on the bottom of the vessel and helps them dissolve evenly into the water, so the syrup stays smooth and does not taste burnt.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vanilla):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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