Skip to main content
Drink

Chocolate

A chocolate beverage made by melting chocolate with sugar, boiling water, and scalded milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chocolate and sugar 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it over hot water.

  2. Add sugar and boiling water.

  3. Stir until smooth and glossy.

  4. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes.

Combine with milk

  1. Add part of the milk and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into the rest of the milk.

  3. Let it stand over the fire for 5 to 6 minutes.

  4. Whisk to make it frothy and prevent a skin from forming.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Chocolate
Provides the rich flavor and body of the drink as it melts into the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the bitterness of the chocolate.
Milk
Forms the main liquid and gives the drink its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Whisk to make it frothy and prevent a skin from forming. Milk proteins denature and form a film on the surface as it sits hot. Whisking breaks up that film and incorporates air, keeping the drink smooth and frothy.

“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.

More chocolate milk recipes

Plain 7 See all 83 →

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes