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Chocolate Drops

Chocolate Drops are small chocolate-coated sugar balls made by boiling sugar and water, cooling, beating, forming, and coating with melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Chocolate Drops

Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan without stirring until it reaches a rope-like consistency.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a cold platter and let it cool for about five minutes.

  3. Beat the cooled mixture until it creams, adding vanilla while beating.

  4. Form the mixture into balls and place them on greased paper.

Dip and serve

  1. Melt the chocolate and keep it warm in a pan of hot water.

  2. Use a knitting needle to pick up each ball and dip it in the melted chocolate.

  3. Serve the chocolate drops after about twenty minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that cools and sets into the creamy centre.
Huyler’s chocolate
Forms the sweet, firm outer coating around each centre.

The step that matters

Beating the cooled mixture until it creams. Sugar syrup must cool undisturbed before beating; if it is stirred or beaten while hot, large crystals form and the centre turns grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

“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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