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Dessert

Chocolate Filling

Chocolate filling made by melting chocolate with milk, sugar, and egg, then cooking until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Chocolate Filling

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the grated chocolate in the milk.

  2. Stir in the sugar and egg.

  3. Cook on the fire until it thickens.

Finish

  1. Let it cool, then spread on the cake.

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. Egg + sugartop 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

Bakers' chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and rich body of the filling.
Milk
Melts the chocolate and forms the liquid base of the filling.
Egg
Thickens the filling as it heats and helps it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Cook on the fire until it thickens. Egg proteins set as they heat, thickening the filling. Heat too low leaves it runny, and too high can scramble the egg and make it grainy.

“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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