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Drink

Plain Chocolate

A chocolate milk made by heating milk, mixing corn starch, and adding chocolate, sugar, and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Plain Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cornstarch slurry

  1. Mix the corn-starch with ½ cup of the milk.

Cook the milk

  1. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. Stir in the corn-starch mixture and cook for 10 minutes.

Make the chocolate base

  1. Cut the chocolate into fine bits and place in a small pan.

  2. Add the sugar and hot water to the chocolate and heat over a hot fire, stirring constantly until smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the chocolate mixture to the hot milk and whisk until frothy.

  2. For a thicker froth, pour the mixture back and forth between the boiler and a pitcher from a height.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base and carries the chocolate flavor throughout the drink.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and, once melted, colors and enriches the milk.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the drink body and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the corn-starch mixture. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before heating, then cooked, to thicken evenly. Adding it to hot milk without first mixing it into cool milk can cause lumps, and cooking long enough lets the starch swell and thicken fully.

“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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