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Drink

Chocolate or Cocoa

A warm beverage made by boiling milk and water with grated chocolate and sweetening to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 or Cocoa

makes two cups

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk and water.

  2. Add grated chocolate and sweeten to taste.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Provides the creamy body and mild dairy flavor of the drink.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and color, and melts into the liquid as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes. Milk can scorch on the bottom of the pan or boil over when heated hard. Its sugars and proteins brown and stick to hot metal, so keep the heat controlled while it boils.

“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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