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Dessert

Chocolate

A smooth chocolate glaze made by melting chocolate with water, then adding icing sugar and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the chocolate in water until smooth.

  2. Stir in the icing sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Mix well, but do not return to the heat.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + lemontop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cake chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and sets the ganache as it cools.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and body, thickening the mixture as it cools.
Water
Melts the chocolate smoothly into a fluid base.

The step that matters

Mix well, but do not return to the heat. Reheating chocolate after the sugar is added can cause it to seize or turn grainy and dull. Keeping the mixture off the heat lets it stay smooth and glossy as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar. 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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