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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the chocolate base

  1. Cut the chocolate into small pieces.

  2. Cook the chocolate in sweet milk until dissolved.

  3. Add sweet cream, sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix well.

Thicken with eggs

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with a little cold milk.

  2. Stir the yolk mixture into the chocolate mixture.

  3. Stir until thick, but do not let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

Fold in the whites

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the chocolate mixture.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and, once melted, the body of the sauce.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as they cook; whites are folded in for lightness.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier texture.
Sweet milk
Liquid that melts the chocolate and forms the base of the sauce.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stiffen the egg whites.

The step that matters

Stir until thick, but do not let it boil.. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot they scramble and turn grainy. Keeping the heat gentle keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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