Skip to main content
Dessert

Hot Chocolate Sauce for Ice Cream

A warm chocolate sauce made from brown sugar, milk, chocolate, and butter, served over ice cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hot Chocolate Sauce for Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, sweet milk, and bitter chocolate.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until it forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot sauce over each dish of ice cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth to the sauce.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid base that dissolves the sugar and carries the chocolate.
Bitter chocolate
Gives the sauce its chocolate flavor and body as it melts into the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Cooking to the soft-ball stage. Sugar concentration determines the sauce's thickness once cooled. Cooking too little leaves it thin, while cooking too long makes it stiff and grainy when it sets.

“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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes