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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

Chocolate cream balls made from sugar, water, arrowroot, butter, vanilla, and sweet vanilla chocolate, shaped and coated in melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.

  2. Add arrowroot or cornstarch and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. Boil for about 10 minutes, then add butter.

  4. Remove from heat and stir until it resembles granulated cream.

  5. Stir in vanilla.

Shape and dry

  1. Butter your hands and shape the cream into marble-sized balls.

  2. Place the balls on a clean board or flat dish to dry.

Coat in chocolate

  1. Grate the chocolate and melt it in a bowl over boiling water until syrupy.

  2. Roll each cream ball in the melted chocolate until coated.

  3. Carefully place the coated balls on a dish to dry.

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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 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. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that crystallizes into the creamy, soft centre.
Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the syrup so it sets into a smooth, stable cream.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the cream and gives it a richer mouthfeel.
Sweet vanilla chocolate
Forms the outer coating that adds flavour and a firm, glossy shell.

The step that matters

Boil for about 10 minutes, then stir until granulated cream. Sugar syrup must be cooked to the right concentration and then stirred as it cools so small crystals form, giving a creamy rather than hard texture. Under-cooking leaves the centres runny; over-cooking makes them brittle.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, vanilla, chocolate. 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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