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Drink

Chocolate

A hot chocolate beverage made by boiling water, adding milk or cream, and dissolving chocolate tablets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,128 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1½ cups of water until reduced to 1 cup.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of warm milk or cream, but do not boil.

  3. Break a tablet of chocolate into two pieces and place the pieces in a cup.

Make the chocolate pulp

  1. Pour enough boiling water or milk over the chocolate to cover it.

  2. Let the chocolate sit for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour off excess liquid.

  4. Mash the chocolate into a soft pulp.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the pulp to a saucepan of boiling water or milk.

  2. Boil for 5-6 minutes without stirring much.

  3. Let it sit near the fire for 8-10 minutes to mellow before serving.

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

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

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 cocoa fat that gives the drink its richness.
Milk or cream
Adds fat and body, making the drink smoother and less thin.

The step that matters

Stir in the warm milk or cream without boiling it. Milk and cream can scorch on the bottom of the pan and form a skin or curdle when boiled, which spoils the texture and taste of the drink.

“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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