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Dessert

Chocolate Soup

A chocolate soup made with milk, egg yolks, and whipped egg whites, topped with sugared, browned whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Pound down the chocolate until fine.

  2. Boil the chocolate in the milk until melted.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks until well combined.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the beaten egg whites onto the soup.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the egg whites and brown them using a salamander or broiler.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 body of the soup as it melts into the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the melted chocolate and yolks are combined into.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and add richness as they combine with the warm milk.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light foam that sits on top of the soup.
Sugar
Sprinkled on the whites, it caramelises under heat to add browning and sweetness.

The step that matters

Mix in the egg yolks. Adding yolks to very hot liquid can scramble them. Combining them gently and evenly keeps the soup smooth and lightly thickened rather than grainy.

“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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