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Dessert

Cream Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made by dissolving cocoa powder, adding sugar, and stirring in cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Dissolve the cocoa powder in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar to the dissolved cocoa, adjusting to your taste.

  3. Gradually stir in the cream until well combined.

Use

  1. Use the icing to frost cakes or for decorating as 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cocoa powder + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Cocoa powder + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa powder
Provides the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the icing.
Pure cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the icing a smooth, spreadable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, balancing the bitterness of the cocoa.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream. Adding cream slowly to the dissolved cocoa and sugar helps it blend evenly without lumps, giving a smooth, consistent icing.

“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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