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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with milk, eggs, bitter chocolate, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 base

  1. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch with a little cold milk.

  2. Combine with the rest of the milk and cook in a double boiler until thick, about 8 minutes.

  3. Melt the chocolate over hot water and add it to the hot milk mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Stir in the unbeaten yolks and mix well into the cooked mixture.

  3. Cook for 1 minute, then add vanilla and cool 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. 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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the sauce; beaten whites add lightness.
Bitter chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and richness of the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitter chocolate.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the milk mixture until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the milk mixture is hot enough and stirred, so the base must be cooked until it turns thick. Undercooked starch leaves the sauce thin and gives a raw, starchy taste.

“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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