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Drink

Cocoa Nectar

A chilled drink made from cocoa, coffee, sugar, water, vanilla, and topped with ice cream or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and coffee work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve cocoa in hot coffee.

  2. Add sugar and water, then strain the mixture.

  3. When cold, flavor with vanilla.

  4. Pour into glasses, adding 1 tablespoon of ice cream or whipped cream to each glass 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. Cocoa + coffeetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 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. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to balance the bitterness of the cocoa and coffee.
Vanilla
Adds aromatic flavor that rounds out the chocolate and coffee notes.
Ice cream or whipped cream
Adds richness and a creamy, cooling topping to each glass.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, vanilla, cream):

  1. Hazelnutfits about as well
  2. Cocoathe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, vanilla, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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