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Dessert

Chocolate Kisses

Chocolate kisses are bite‑size chocolate confections made from egg whites, confectioner's sugar, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Kisses

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the confectioner's sugar and melted chocolate, mixing until smooth.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered parchment paper in a baking tin.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the kisses their airy structure and lift.
Confectioner's sugar
Dissolves into the whipped whites to sweeten and stabilise the meringue-like mixture.
Chocolate
Adds flavour and colour to the mixture and is melted in before mixing.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap air; under-whipped whites or any trace of fat or yolk will collapse and yield flat, dense kisses.

“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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