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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A sweet treat made from egg white, confectioners' sugar, orange juice, and melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Beat the egg white until cloudy.

  2. Gradually add sugar and orange juice, alternating until all juice is used.

  3. Continue adding sugar until the mixture is thick enough to roll into balls or desired shapes.

Coat and set

  1. Melt the Baker's chocolate in a bowl over a steaming kettle.

  2. Dip the fondant shapes into the melted chocolate and place them on waxed paper.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Orange + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together928 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 white
Adds body and light structure to the sugar mixture as it is beaten.
Confectioners' sugar
Provides the bulk and sweetness that thickens the mixture into a rollable fondant.
Orange juice
Supplies liquid and flavor that softens the sugar into a workable paste.
Baker's chocolate
Forms a melted coating that adds richness and a firm, sweet outer shell.

The step that matters

Adding sugar until the mixture is thick enough to roll. Adding sugar gradually keeps the fondant smooth and pliable; adding too much too fast can make it dry and crumbly, while too little leaves it too soft to shape.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, chocolate):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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