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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made from boiled sugar, egg yolks, chocolate, vanilla, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla 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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar with a little water until it forms a string when dripped from a spoon.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and chocolate together.

  3. Pour molasses over the mixture and beat until smooth enough to spread.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and body, and help the icing thicken and emulsify as it is beaten.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and, when boiled to a string stage, gives the icing its set and smooth texture.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and fat that give the icing its color and body.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, a darker color, and a slightly acidic, complex flavor.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate and molasses flavors.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to a string. The sugar must reach the string stage, where the syrup is concentrated enough to set once cooled. Too little cooking leaves the icing runny, and too much makes it hard and grainy.

“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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