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Chocolate Butter Icing

A chocolate butter icing made by mixing melted chocolate with butter, icing sugar, water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Butter Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the chocolate

  1. Grate the chocolate and dissolve it in the water over low heat.

Make the icing

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the icing sugar to the creamed butter and beat until smooth.

  3. Once the chocolate is cold, add it along with the vanilla essence to the butter and sugar mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Butter
Provides fat that makes the icing rich and creamy when creamed.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and, beaten with butter, gives a smooth, spreadable texture.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavour and firms the icing as it cools.
Vanilla essence
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Cool the chocolate before adding it. Warm melted chocolate can soften or melt the creamed butter, making the icing runny and greasy. Letting it cool first keeps the butter structure stable so the icing thickens and spreads well.

“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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