Name: Nut or Chocolate Creams
Ingredients: chocolate; firm cream; almonds or filberts; oiling agent (for fork); waxed paper

Why it works: Chocolate and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nut or Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the chocolate as directed in your recipe.
Mould small bits of the firm cream and drop them into the melted chocolate.
Remove them with an oiled fork and let them dry on waxed paper.
For nuts, place part of the firm cream in a bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.
Stir the cream steadily until melted, keeping the water boiling.
Once melted, remove the bowl from the heat and drop in almonds or filberts.
Coat the nuts well, lift them out with an oiled fork, and tap to remove excess chocolate.
Drop the coated nuts on waxed paper to dry.
A second coating when dry is optional but improves the 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.

Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,466 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,130 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).