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Dessert

Vanilla Chocolate Drops

A confection of chocolate drops flavored with vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, ambergris, powdered sugar, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Vanilla Chocolate Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spice sugar

  1. Pound the vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, ambergris, and ½ pound of powdered sugar in a metal mortar.

  2. Sift the mixture through a silk sieve and combine it with the remaining sugar.

Make the drops

  1. Warm an iron or metal mortar and add the chocolate, pounding it until melted.

  2. Add the sugar mixture to the melted chocolate and mix thoroughly.

  3. Drop small amounts of the mixture onto paper.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Chocolate
Melts to form the base that binds the drops together and sets as they cool.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and adds bulk to the paste.
Vanilla
Adds a fragrant aroma that carries the flavour of the drops.
Cinnamon
Adds warm spice flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Melting the chocolate. Chocolate must be melted gently and fully so it stays smooth and blends evenly with the sugar. Overheating can cause it to seize or turn grainy, and the drops will then set unevenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cinnamon, sugar, 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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