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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A dessert of egg white and sugar mixture rolled into small balls and coated with chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the centres

  1. Beat the egg white until light.

  2. Add sugar and vanilla extract.

  3. Mix in enough confectioner's sugar to form a stiff mixture.

  4. Roll into balls the size of a small marble.

Set and coat

  1. Spread on a pan to firm up.

  2. Cover with chocolate coating.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg white
Whipped to a light foam that gives the centres their airy base.
Confectioner's sugar
Stiffens the whipped egg white into a mixture firm enough to roll.
Sugar
Sweetens the centres and adds body to the mixture.
Chocolate coating
Forms a sweet outer shell that hardens as it sets.

The step that matters

Mixing in the confectioner's sugar. Add it gradually until the mixture is stiff enough to roll. Too little leaves the centres sticky and hard to shape, while too much makes them dry and crumbly.

“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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