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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A rich chocolate sauce made with chocolate, milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and whipped egg whites.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Combine chopped chocolate and sweet milk in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until dissolved.

  2. Add sweet cream, sugar, and vanilla extract; stir to combine.

  3. Beat egg yolks with a little cold milk in a small bowl, then stir into the chocolate mixture.

  4. Continue stirring until thickened, but do not let it boil.

Finish with egg whites

  1. Remove from heat; beat egg whites with sugar in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form.

  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 dark color of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it body and a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, they lighten the sauce's texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until thickened, but do not let it boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they can scramble, leaving lumps and a grainy texture.

“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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