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Dessert

Milk Soup with Chocolate

A chocolate-infused milk soup made with milk, water, vanilla bean, chocolate, cornstarch or arrowroot, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Milk Soup with Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring the milk and water to a boil in a pot.

  2. Add the piece of vanilla bean.

  3. Dissolve the chocolate and pour it into the boiling milk.

  4. Cook for 1 minute.

  5. Dissolve the cornstarch or arrowroot in a little cold water and stir it into the hot chocolate.

  6. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve.

  2. Serve with black crusts or toast if desired.

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. Vanilla + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and adds richness and body to the soup.
Cornstarch or arrowroot
Thickens the hot liquid as its starch swells when heated.
Vanilla bean
Adds a warm, fragrant aroma to the soup.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cornstarch or arrowroot in cold water first. Starch added directly to hot liquid clumps. Dissolving it in cold water first lets it disperse evenly, then it thickens smoothly as the hot liquid gelatinizes the starch.

“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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