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Chocolate Sponge Icing

A chocolate icing made by beating egg yolks, sweet milk, butter, and sugar, then boiling and adding melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Sponge Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks, sweet milk, butter, and sugar together.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat and add richness to the icing.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and helps give it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Bitter chocolate
Gives the icing its chocolate flavor, deep color, and fat for a glossy finish.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mixture before it thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer texture.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 5 minutes. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble or turn grainy if overheated or boiled too long. Stirring during the boil keeps the heat even and the texture smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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