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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with milk, cornstarch, eggs, chocolate, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk base

  1. Reserve ¼ cup of milk and scald the remaining milk.

  2. Dilute cornstarch with the reserved cold milk and add to the scalded milk.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes in a double boiler, stirring constantly.

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Melt chocolate over boiling water; add ¼ cup sugar and hot water, stirring to a smooth paste.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the chocolate mixture to the cooked milk mixture.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff, then gradually add powdered sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks to the mixture and combine.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes, then cool slightly and add vanilla.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens into a sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the sauce; whites are beaten until stiff.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and color of the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the chocolate paste.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cooking for 2 minutes. Egg yolks can curdle when overheated, while cornstarch needs enough heat to thicken fully. Keep the sauce from boiling hard so it thickens smoothly without scrambling the yolks.

“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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