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Drink

Chocolate

A hot chocolate beverage made by heating milk and water, mixing grated chocolate, and adding sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk or milk and water.

  2. Mix the grated chocolate with a small quantity of hot milk to form a smooth mixture.

  3. Add the remaining milk and stir until thoroughly dissolved.

Serve

  1. Let it boil once and serve.

  2. Top with whipped cream if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the main flavour and, as it melts, the body of the drink.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds creaminess and body to the chocolate.

The step that matters

Mix the grated chocolate with hot milk to a smooth mixture. Adding the chocolate to hot milk gradually, after first making a smooth paste, helps it disperse evenly. Dumping it in all at once can leave lumps that are hard to dissolve.

“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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