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Drink

French Chocolate

A chocolate drink made by dissolving chocolate in boiling milk and optionally topping with foamed egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

French Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the chocolate square in a cup.

  2. Pour enough boiling milk over it to dissolve it into a paste.

  3. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

Make the drink

  1. Once boiling, gently stir in the chocolate paste until thoroughly mixed.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. If desired, foam the egg white and place it on top as an improvement.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the main flavor and body of the drink.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and carries the chocolate into a smooth drink.
Egg white
Whipped foam that adds a light, airy topping to the drink.

The step that matters

Dissolving the chocolate into a paste. Chocolate dispersed in a small amount of hot liquid first melts and blends smoothly. Adding it cold or in large amounts of milk can leave lumps or grainy bits.

“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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