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Dessert

Vanilla Chocolate Drops

A confection of vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, ambergris, powdered sugar, and chocolate formed into drops.

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 until melted.

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

  3. Drop small amounts onto paper to set.

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
Forms the body of the drops and sets firm as it cools, giving them their structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the chocolate and, being fine, blends smoothly into the melted mass.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the chocolate.
Vanilla
Adds its characteristic aroma and flavour to the chocolate.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar mixture to the melted chocolate. The chocolate must be fully melted and the mixture mixed thoroughly so the sugar and spices are evenly distributed; uneven mixing leaves gritty or streaky drops that 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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