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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

Chocolate icing made with sugar, lemon juice, water, chocolate, icing sugar, cocoa essence, vanilla, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,294 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Combine sugar, lemon juice, and a little water in a saucepan. Heat until dissolved.

  2. Stir in the chocolate and mix with the back of a spoon until smooth and glossy.

  3. Let cool.

Make the icing and finish

  1. Mix icing sugar, cocoa essence, vanilla, and water in a saucepan over low heat until warm.

  2. Pour the icing over the cake. Spread with a knife.

  3. Sprinkle with coconut.

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. Vanilla + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chocolate + cocoatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-ethyl-3,6-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that gives the icing its sweetness and smooth body.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and, once melted, the glossy structure of the icing.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the icing, helping it set smooth on the cake.
Cocoa essence
Intensifies the chocolate flavour of the icing.

The step that matters

Stir the chocolate until smooth and glossy. Chocolate that is overheated or unevenly mixed can seize or turn dull and grainy. Gentle, thorough stirring in the warm syrup melts it evenly, giving a smooth, glossy finish.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, coconut):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, coconut. 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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