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For Making Cocoa From the Nibs

A method for extracting cocoa from nibs using water and an eggshell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and egg work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 582 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

For Making Cocoa From the Nibs

Ingredients

Directions

First infusion

  1. Put cocoa nibs and an eggshell into a stewpan with 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 4 hours.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve into a separate basin.

Second infusion

  1. Return the nibs to the stewpan with another quart of cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 3 hours and strain again.

Finish and serve

  1. Boil the cocoa gently for 2 hours the next morning 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.

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. Cocoa + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa nibs
Provide the cocoa flavour, colour and body as their solids and fats dissolve slowly into the water.

The step that matters

Straining through a fine sieve. Fine straining removes the small particles left after long simmering. Without it, the cocoa stays gritty and cloudy, and the texture suffers.

“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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