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Chocolate Creams

Chocolate cream balls made by thickening sugar and water, adding vanilla, forming balls, and rolling them in melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, water, and arrowroot.

  2. Boil for 5 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and stir until it thickens to a cream.

  4. Once nearly smooth, add vanilla and form the mixture into balls.

Coat in chocolate

  1. Melt the chocolate without adding water.

  2. Roll the cream balls in the warm chocolate.

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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the cream mixture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the mixture as it heats, letting it set into a firm cream.
Chocolate
Forms the outer coating and gives the balls their main flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly while boiling. Arrowroot thickens quickly once heated, so constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan and gives an even, smooth cream.

“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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