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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made by boiling chocolate with milk, sweetened with sugar, flavored with vanilla, and thickened with egg or cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Add vanilla and sugar to taste.

  3. When hot, pour the mixture over the egg while whisking continuously.

  4. Return to the pan and whisk over low heat until the egg is cooked but not curdled.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Cornflour option

  1. If omitting the egg, thicken the sauce with 1 teaspoon of cornflour mixed with a little cold milk.

  2. Pour the boiling chocolate over the cornflour mixture and stir over low heat for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Add vanilla at the end if using cornflour.

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 + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Chocolate
Melts into the hot milk to give the sauce its flavour and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the chocolate and sets the sauce's texture.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set during gentle heating.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Returning the egg mixture to the pan over low heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so gentle, constant whisking over low heat thickens the sauce evenly. Too much heat or too little stirring scrambles the egg and makes the sauce curdled.

“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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