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Dessert

Chocolate Italian Cream

A sweet dessert made by boiling sugar, milk, butter, and chocolate, then cooling in a greased pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, milk, butter, and chocolate.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and stir for 5 minutes.

Set

  1. Pour into a greased pan.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the mixture as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks down into a creamy, moist base.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture.
Chocolate
Supplies cocoa flavour and richness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the mixture from burning while the sugar concentrates.

“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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