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Dessert

Chocolate Crbam

A chilled chocolate mousse made with powdered chocolate, milk, sugar, thick cream, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,107 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Crbam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mousse

  1. Dissolve the powdered chocolate in the milk by warming it.

  2. Mix the chocolate mixture with the cream and sugar.

  3. Whip the mixture until it is quite stiff.

  4. Pour into a mold lined with wet muslin.

Set and serve

  1. Allow to stand for 12 hours.

  2. Turn out, remove the muslin, and sprinkle with desiccated coconut.

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 + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Thick cream
Whipped to trap air, giving the mousse its light, airy body.
Powdered chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and, once set, firms the mousse.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the mousse and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Whip the mixture until it is quite stiff. Under-whipped cream lacks enough trapped air to hold its shape, so the mousse may stay soft and collapse. Over-whipping can turn cream grainy or buttery, so stop when peaks hold firm.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, milk, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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