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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with milk, corn starch, sugar, chocolate, egg whites, egg yolks, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Combine milk, corn starch, salt, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Scrape the chocolate and melt it over hot water.

  4. Stir the melted chocolate into the boiling milk mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff in a separate bowl.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar, then mix in the egg yolks.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling chocolate sauce.

  4. Cook for 1 more minute.

  5. Add vanilla extract.

  6. Serve hot or cold.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and add body and richness when cooked.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they add lightness to the finished sauce.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce thickens in.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling chocolate sauce. Egg yolks can scramble if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring constantly while adding the egg mixture and cooking briefly helps it blend smoothly and thicken evenly.

“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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