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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with boiling water, grated chocolate, sugar, milk, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the water and sugar together.

  2. Add the grated chocolate moistened with ½ cup of milk.

  3. Dissolve the arrowroot in ½ cup of water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Boil for three minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain and serve hot or cold over ice cream or cake.

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. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Grated chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and body, and melts into the liquid to colour the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce a smooth, syrupy body.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a glossy, pourable texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and fat, softening the chocolate's bitterness.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved arrowroot. Arrowroot must be fully dissolved in cold water before it goes into the hot mixture, otherwise it clumps. Its starch thickens once heated, so the sauce should be kept boiling while it is added and simmered briefly.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, sugar, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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