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Chocolate Paste

A thick chocolate paste made by boiling chocolate, corn starch, eggs, sugar, and milk, flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat together the grated chocolate, corn starch, egg yolks, sugar, and egg whites in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into the heated milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Boil the mixture.

  5. Stir continually until it thickens into a stiff paste.

  6. Flavor with Price’s vanilla.

Assemble and dry

  1. Spread the paste between five layers of cake.

  2. Cover the outside of the cake.

  3. Set the cake in a cool place to dry.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Grated chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and cocoa fat that give the paste its body.
Corn starch
Swells when heated with the liquid, thickening the mixture into a stiff paste.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the paste and help it set as it cooks.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while the mixture boils and thickens. Starch thickens only once it reaches a boil, and it can scorch on the bottom of the pan or form lumps if not stirred continually. Constant stirring keeps heat even and the paste 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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