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Dessert

Cocoa Frappe Creams

A chilled dessert made from cocoa, cream, glycerine, egg whites, vanilla, and pecans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa Frappe Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Melt the bon bon cream over a steam bath.

  2. Add glycerine to the melted cream.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Stir in cocoa and vanilla extract.

  5. Add chopped pecans and mix well.

Set

  1. Spoon small amounts onto wax 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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + pecanstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + pecanstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,280 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cocoa + pecanstop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Bon bon cream
Forms the sweet, creamy base that the other ingredients are mixed into.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they add airy lightness to the frappe texture.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour.
Glycerine
Helps the candy stay soft and moist rather than hard.
Chopped pecans
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft cream.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks before folding, since their trapped air gives the frappe its light, airy structure. Under-beaten or deflated whites leave the creams dense.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, vanilla, pecans):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Brazil nutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, vanilla, pecans. 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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