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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce for Ice Cream

A chocolate sauce made with chocolate, sugar, salt, boiling water, cornstarch, and vanilla.

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 Sauce for Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine chocolate, sugar, salt, and boiling water in a saucepan over heat.

  2. Stir until boiling and cook for 5 minutes.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix cornstarch with a little cold water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Stir the cornstarch paste into the hot mixture and boil for 6 to 8 minutes.

  3. Add vanilla and serve hot or cold.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 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

Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and dark color of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps keep the sauce smooth and glossy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it a spoonable texture.

The step that matters

Stir the cornstarch paste into the hot mixture and boil. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in the paste before it goes in, or it clumps. It needs to reach a boil to swell and thicken the sauce fully.

“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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