Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Profiteroles

A sweet pastry made from a chocolate batter, baked into small cakes, served with vanilla‑flavored whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla 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 Profiteroles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the chocolate paste

  1. Shave the chocolate into a cup and place it in a pan of boiling water to melt.

  2. Prepare a paste similar to that for chocolate eclairs, using 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Once the paste is cooked, beat in the melted chocolate.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the eggs and beat until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto lightly buttered pans, forming round cakes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

  3. Serve hot or cold with whipped cream flavored with vanilla, heaped in the center of a flat dish with profiteroles arranged around it.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 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

Eggs
Beaten in to lighten the batter and give the baked profiteroles their structure and rise.
Chocolate
Melted into the paste to give the profiteroles their chocolate flavour and color.
Sugar
Sweetens the paste and adds to the flavour of the profiteroles.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs until light. The cooled paste must be beaten well with the eggs so the batter is smooth and airy; eggs added to a hot paste can scramble, and under-beaten batter bakes dense and flat.

“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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes