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Dessert

Boiled Chocolate Icing

A boiled chocolate icing made from sugar, water, and cocoa powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cocoa powder are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,920 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water.

  2. Boil until it reaches the 'Blow' or 'Feather' stage.

Finish the icing

  1. Pour the mixture into an earthenware pan.

  2. Add the cocoa powder and stir with a spatula until smooth and at the icing point.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled to a syrup, the body that sets the icing as it cools.
Cocoa powder
Adds chocolate flavour and colour, and stiffens the icing slightly as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Boiling to the Blow or Feather stage. The sugar concentration reached while boiling decides how the icing sets. Stopping too early leaves it runny and soft, while boiling too far makes it hard and grainy once cool. Watch the syrup closely at this point.

“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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