Skip to main content
Dessert

French Chocolate

A chocolate confection made by boiling sugar and glucose, adding cocoa, and shaping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 956 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

French Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 310°F (154°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the sugar

  1. Boil the sugar and glucose until it reaches 310°F (154°C).

  2. Pour the mixture onto an oiled marble slab.

Add the cocoa and shape

  1. Slice the cocoa into small pieces to help it melt quickly, then sprinkle it over the hot sugar.

  2. Mix the cocoa and sugar thoroughly before shaping.

  3. Flavor with a little vanillin if desired.

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 + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk that sets into a firm candy when cooled.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals, keeping the candy smooth rather than grainy.
Unsweetened cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavor and dark color.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to 310°F (154°C). The sugar and glucose must reach this temperature so the mixture sets firm once cooled. Stopping early leaves it soft and sticky, while overheating makes it bitter and dark.

“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.

More french chocolate recipes

Cake 14 See all 3 →

You might also like

Coconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipesCocoa Nut PuddingCocoa Nut Pudding9 recipes