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Dessert

Chocolate Icing for Eclairs

A chocolate icing made by boiling chocolate, sweet milk, corn starch, and vanilla, then sweetening with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing for Eclairs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chocolate, sweet milk, corn starch, and vanilla in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and sweeten with powdered sugar until desired sweetness is achieved.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and dark colour of the icing.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the icing body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch thickens and the chocolate melts into.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the icing and adds smoothness once removed from the heat.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and it must be stirred to prevent lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Undercooked starch leaves the icing thin and cloudy.

“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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