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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A confection made from sugar, egg whites, glycerine, vanilla, acetic acid, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 248°F (120°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the candy

  1. Cover the sugar with water and boil until it reaches 248°F (120°C).

  2. Add the acetic acid when it begins to boil and the vanilla when you remove it from heat.

Mix and coat

  1. Place half the glycerine on a slab.

  2. Pour the rest of the glycerine on top of the candy.

  3. When cool enough, add the beaten egg whites and mix until it 'picks up.'

  4. Dip in melted chocolate.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Sugar
Forms the body of the candy and provides its sweetness.
Egg whites
Add air and a light, airy texture to the candy.
Glycerine
Keeps the candy soft and helps prevent it from becoming brittle.
Acetic acid
Helps prevent the sugar from crystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Cool the candy before adding the egg whites. Egg whites added to syrup that is still too hot will cook or deflate, so the candy loses its airy texture. Waiting until it is cool enough lets the whites stay foamy and mix in smoothly until the candy picks up.

“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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