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Dessert

Chocolate Cornstarch

A chocolate thickened with cornstarch, served with cream.

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 Cornstarch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 1 pint of water to a boil.

  2. Mix in 2 tablespoons of chocolate and let boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Thicken the mixture with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch.

  4. Flavor with salt and vanilla.

  5. Pour onto a soup plate and serve with sterilized cream, 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. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, pudding-like dessert.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and color of the dessert.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be stirred into liquid that is hot enough to gelatinize its starch. Added to a boiling mixture and stirred well, it thickens evenly; if it is not fully dispersed first, it can clump and leave lumps.

“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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