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Dessert

Chocolate Syrup

A sweet cocoa syrup made by boiling sugar, cocoa, water, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mix the sugar and cocoa powder together in a saucepan.

  2. Add the hot water and stir until it begins to boil.

  3. Once boiling, add a pinch of salt and stop stirring.

  4. Cook for exactly 2 minutes after it starts boiling.

Finish and store

  1. Remove from heat and let cool, then stir in the vanilla extract.

  2. Pour the syrup into a glass jar and store until needed.

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

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

  2. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and body, thickening the syrup as it dissolves and cooks.
Cocoa powder
Supplies the chocolate flavour and colour, and some body to the syrup.
Hot water
Dissolves the sugar and cocoa into a pourable liquid.

The step that matters

Cook for exactly 2 minutes after it starts boiling. Boiling concentrates the sugar and thickens the syrup. Cooking too briefly leaves it thin, while cooking too long makes it thick and prone to crystallising as it cools.

“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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