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Dessert

Chocolatl Frosting

A frosting made from chocolate, butter, sugar, milk, and hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Chocolatl Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hickory nuts finely.

Make the frosting

  1. In a saucepan, combine chocolate, butter, sugar, and milk.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms a soft ball when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and stir until cool enough to spread.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and body of the frosting.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture as the frosting cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, when boiled, helps it set to a spreadable consistency.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps dissolve the sugar during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil to the soft-ball stage. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar. Stopping at the soft-ball point, when a drop forms a soft ball in cold water, gives a frosting that sets to a spreadable texture. Too little boiling leaves it runny; too much makes it hard and grainy.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, butter, sugar, milk):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, butter, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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