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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A sweet chocolate dessert made by cooking sugar and water, then adding chocolate and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water and sugar.

  2. Stir until sugar dissolves.

  3. Place on stove and cook slowly without stirring.

  4. When it begins to boil, cook for about 10 minutes until it hardens enough to roll into a ball.

  5. Remove from heat.

Form the creams

  1. Stir in chocolate.

  2. Let cool.

  3. Once cool, stir with a spoon until thick.

  4. Work with your hands until creamy and smooth.

  5. Flavor with vanilla.

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. 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).

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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sets into a creamy, sweet fondant when worked.
Chocolate
Adds flavor and color to the fondant mass.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and rounds out the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the syrup without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can encourage crystals to form, leading to a grainy rather than smooth texture. Cooking it slowly and undisturbed keeps the sugar in solution until it reaches the right concentration to set creamy.

“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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