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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made with sugar, water, grated chocolate, beaten egg, vanilla, and walnuts.

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

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and just enough water to moisten.

  2. Boil until the mixture is clear.

  3. Add grated chocolate and beaten egg.

  4. Flavor with vanilla.

  5. Beat the mixture until it cools.

Decorate the cake

  1. Cover a cake with the chocolate icing.

  2. Arrange shelled walnuts in circles on top of the cake.

  3. To create daisies, place one walnut with seven around it at intervals.

  4. Ice and dry raisins in the oven.

  5. Place the raisins on the chocolate icing.

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

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

  3. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. 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

Sugar
Dissolves into a syrup that sets and sweetens the icing as it cools.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and body of the icing.
Egg
Beaten stiff, it adds structure and lightness to the icing.
English walnuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour as a decorative topping.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture is clear. Sugar syrup must be cooked until the sugar fully dissolves and the liquid runs clear before the chocolate and egg are added. Undissolved sugar crystals can make the icing grainy as it cools.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, egg, vanilla. 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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