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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made by heating milk, butter, and cream, dissolving chocolate, and adding sugar until it hardens when dropped in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk, butter, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the chocolate in the heated mixture.

  3. Add the sugar and cook until it hardens when dropped in water.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and sets the icing firm and glossy as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, when cooked, forms a syrup that thickens and sets as it cools.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the icing a softer, creamier texture.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the icing smooth and rich.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that soften the icing and help it blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar until it hardens in water. The sugar syrup's concentration controls the icing's final set. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while cooking too long makes it hard and grainy 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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