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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A sweet glaze made by dissolving sugar in water, boiling, then mixing with beaten egg whites and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate 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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in enough water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms strings when dripped from a spoon.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites and stir until nearly cold.

  4. Add grated chocolate until the icing reaches a dark brown color.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Dissolves and boils into a syrup that sets and sweetens the icing.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they trap air and give the icing a light, fluffy structure.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and deepens the icing to a dark brown color.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites slightly and thicken them, yet the mixture is stirred until nearly cold so it sets into a stable, spreadable icing rather than staying runny or deflating.

“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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