Skip to main content
Drink

Spiced Chocolate

A warm chocolate beverage flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg, optionally finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spiced Chocolate

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the chocolate and set aside.

  2. Boil the milk, reserving a little cold milk to moisten the chocolate.

  3. Mix the reserved cold milk with the grated chocolate to form a smooth paste.

Make the hot chocolate

  1. Once the milk boils, add the cinnamon and let it boil.

  2. Stir in the chocolate paste and boil quickly.

  3. Pour into a pitcher and grate in nutmeg.

  4. Optionally, add rich cream before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the chocolate and spices.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and body of the drink.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mixing the chocolate into a smooth paste. Chocolate does not dissolve well in hot liquid on its own and can clump. Blending it with a little cold milk first lets the particles separate and disperse evenly when the hot milk is added.

“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.

You might also like

Cinnamon TinctureCinnamon Tincture10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes