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Dessert

Chocolate Frosting

A chocolate frosting made by boiling chocolate, sugar, milk, butter, and salt, then adding vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Boil the chocolate, sugar, milk, butter, and salt for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Remove from heat and pour into a dish.

  3. When the mixture is near cool, add the vanilla.

  4. If the mixture is thicker than jelly, thin it with milk.

Frost the cake

  1. Spread the frosting on the 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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar 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 chocolate flavour and body of the frosting.
Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and helps it set to a smooth texture as it cools.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and sets the consistency, and can be added to thin the frosting.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the vanilla when the mixture is near cool. Vanilla is aromatic and its scent fades with heat, so adding it once the mixture has cooled keeps its flavour noticeable. Adding it while the mixture is still very hot can also lose much of the aroma.

“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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