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Dessert

Vanilla Chocolate Drops

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 powdered sugar.

Make the chocolate drops

  1. Warm an iron or metal mortar and add 4 pounds of chocolate, pounding until melted.

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

  3. Drop small amounts of the mixture onto paper to form drops.

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 body of the drops and sets firm as it cools.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dilutes the spices so they blend evenly into the chocolate.
Vanilla
Adds aromatic flavour to the chocolate.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that flavours the chocolate.

The step that matters

Adding the sifted mixture to the melted chocolate. Sifting removes lumps so the powder disperses evenly. If the chocolate is too hot or too cold when the mixture is added, the chocolate may seize or fail to set smoothly, so the drops can come out grainy or dull.

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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