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Dessert

Chocolate Filling

A chocolate filling made by boiling sugar and water, mixing with beaten egg whites, chocolate, and vanilla, then layered with icing and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Shutt, William E., Mrs., [from old catalog] comp · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chocolate Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate icing

  1. Put two cups of white sugar in a pan with half a cup of hot water and boil until it becomes a clear thick syrup.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the whites of three well-beaten eggs, beating continuously.

  3. Stir in one cup of grated chocolate and flavor with vanilla.

Assemble the cake

  1. Grate coconut over the icing between the layers and on the cake.

  2. Cover each layer and the top with icing, then sprinkle thickly with grated pineapple.

  3. Cover each layer with icing, then with stemmed strawberries, add more icing, then the cake; only icing on the top layer.

Make the orange icing

  1. Combine two oranges, juice and rind, juice of one lemon, one and a quarter pounds of confectioner's sugar, and whites of two eggs.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

356Calories
9 gProtein
14 gFat
49 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Shutt, William E., Mrs., [from old catalog] comp. 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. See the original page.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + orangetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

White sugar
Boiled into a thick syrup that sweetens and gives the icing body.
Eggs
Whites beaten with hot syrup to form a stable, spreadable icing structure.
Grated chocolate
Stirred into the icing to add flavor and richness.
Confectioner's sugar
Dissolves smoothly into the orange mixture, adding sweetness and body.
Oranges
Juice and rind add acidity and bright citrus aroma to the icing.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the beaten whites. The hot syrup partly cooks and stabilizes the egg whites into a glossy, spreadable icing. Pouring it in a thin stream while beating continuously prevents scrambling and keeps the foam from collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, egg, orange. 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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