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Chocolate Icing

A simple chocolate icing made by melting chocolate with water and sweetening with icing sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, stir the water and chocolate over medium heat until boiling for about five minutes.

  2. Remove the saucepan from the heat and let it cool slightly.

  3. Add the icing sugar and stir over low heat for a few seconds to just warm it up.

Check the thickness

  1. Check the icing thickness by coating the back of a wooden spoon.

  2. If too thick, add a little more water.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated chocolate
Melts into the base to give the icing its flavour and a smooth, glossy coating once cooled.
Icing sugar
Dissolves into the warm liquid to add sweetness and body, thickening the icing as it cools.

The step that matters

Adding water to thin the icing. Icing thins quickly once liquid is added, so pouring in too much water at once can make it runny. Adding water a little at a time and testing the coating on a spoon keeps the thickness under control.

“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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