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Dessert

Chocolate Jelly

A chocolate gelatin dessert made with cocoa, sugar, boiling water, corn starch, cream, salt, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix cocoa and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Slowly pour in boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Boil for one minute.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix corn-starch with cold water.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the corn-starch mixture, cream, and salt to the boiling mixture.

  2. Boil and stir for seven to eight minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a shallow dish and let cool.

  2. Once cold, spread Sea-foam cream on top and serve ice 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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cocoa + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

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 liquid into a jelly as it cooks with the boiling water.
Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavour and colour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and adds body to its texture.
Rich cream
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.
Extract of vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Boil and stir for seven to eight minutes. Corn-starch thickens only after its granules swell and gelatinize in boiling liquid. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching at the bottom of the pan, and the full boiling time lets the starch set properly.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, cream, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, cream, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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