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Dessert

Chocolate Frosting

A chocolate frosting made from beaten egg whites, sugar, vanilla, melted chocolate, and a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and dry.

  2. Add ½ cup sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 5 tablespoons melted chocolate; mix well.

Spread

  1. Spread the mixture between cake layers and on the top and sides.

Make and add the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine ½ cup granulated sugar and ⅓ cup cold water; boil until it threads.

  2. Pour the syrup immediately over the beaten egg white, beating until stiff enough to hold on the cake.

  3. Flavor with ½ teaspoon vanilla extract.

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 whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, and boiled into syrup it helps the frosting set firm.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor, color, and some richness to the frosting.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the beaten whites. The syrup must be boiled to the thread stage and poured immediately while beating. The hot syrup cooks the egg white proteins, setting the foam into a stable, spreadable frosting. Delay lets the whites deflate.

“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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