Name: Creme De Cocoa
Ingredients: 1 pound cocoa; 24 pints brandy; ½ ounce vanilla; 3½ pounds sugar; 14 pints water

Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Creme De Cocoa

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

Combine cocoa and brandy in a large container.
Add vanilla and let the mixture infuse for several days.

Distill and blend

Distill the infused mixture.
Dissolve sugar in water and mix with the distilled cocoa.

Finish

Filter or strain the mixture and bottle it.

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.

Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together357 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cocoa + brandytop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

Cocoa: Provides the chocolate flavor and aroma that define the liqueur.
Brandy: Its alcohol extracts flavor compounds from the cocoa and vanilla and preserves the liqueur.
Sugar: Sweetens the liqueur and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Vanilla: Adds a sweet, floral aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavor.