Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Frosting

A chocolate frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then mixing with grated chocolate and beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar with water until it reaches a string consistency.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the grated chocolate.

  3. Stir until nearly cold.

  4. Add the beaten egg white and mix well.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that sets the frosting's sweetness and body.
Egg white
Adds air and lightness, giving the frosting a fluffier, smoother texture.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and, melted into the syrup, the frosting's colour and richness.

The step that matters

Stir until nearly cold before adding the egg white. If the syrup is still very hot, the beaten egg white can cook or deflate instead of blending smoothly into the frosting, so it needs to cool first.

“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.

You might also like