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Drink

Cocoa From the Nibs

A beverage made by boiling cocoa nibs with water, then adding cream and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and cream work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 304 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cocoa From the Nibs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cocoa base

  1. Combine the cocoa and water in a double boiler.

  2. Boil for 2 hours until reduced by half.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the cream, add it to the cocoa mixture, strain, and serve.

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. Cocoa + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa
Provides the main chocolate flavor and color as it steeps and reduces in the water.
Water
Acts as the solvent that extracts flavor from the cocoa and then reduces to concentrate it.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and softens the bitterness of the cocoa.

The step that matters

Reducing the cocoa for 2 hours. Long, gentle simmering evaporates water and concentrates the cocoa flavor. Boiling too hard can scorch the mixture or make it bitter, so the heat should stay steady and the level should be checked as it reduces.

“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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