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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

Chocolate creams are a candy made from boiled sugar, glycerine, egg whites, vanilla, and coated in melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 241°F (116°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the syrup

  1. Cover the sugar with water and boil until it reaches 241°F (116°C).

  2. Add the acetic acid when the mixture begins to boil.

  3. Add vanilla when you remove the mixture from heat.

Work the candy

  1. Place half the glycerine on a slab.

  2. Pour the remaining glycerine on top of the candy.

  3. When cool enough, add the beaten egg whites.

  4. Mix until it 'picks up.'

Finish

  1. Dip the mixture in melted chocolate.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet bulk of the candy and sets firm as the syrup cools.
Egg whites
Whip into foam that gives the creamy, light texture of the filling.
Glycerine
Keeps the candy soft and moist by resisting crystallisation.
Acetic acid
Acid that helps prevent sugar from crystallising into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar syrup to 241°F (116°C). Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set properly. Too low and the centres stay soft and runny; too high and they turn hard and brittle once cooled.

“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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