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Dessert

Soft Chocolate Filling

A chocolate filling made by boiling sugar, grated chocolate, and egg yolk mixture with butter until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Soft Chocolate Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the milk or water in a bowl and strain the mixture.

  2. Combine sugar, grated chocolate, and the strained egg mixture in a saucepan.

  3. Add butter and boil while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens to a gravy-like consistency.

Finish and cool

  1. Remove from heat, flavor as desired, and let cool before spreading on cake.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as their proteins set when heated, giving it a gravy-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the mixture as it cooks.
Grated chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and richness.
Milk or water
Acts as the liquid that dilutes the yolks so they blend smoothly into the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the finished filling.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while boiling. Egg yolk proteins thicken the filling as they heat, but if the mixture sits still or overheats, the yolks can scramble into lumps. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the filling smooth.

“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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