Why it works: Chocolate and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,128 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Chocolate Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grate the chocolate into a bowl and mix it with the custard powder and flour.
Dissolve 2 tablespoons of Swiss milk in 1 pint of water.
Use part of this mixture to create a paste with the dry ingredients.
Make the cream
Heat the remaining mixture until boiling, then pour it quickly into the bowl while stirring for one minute.
Serve
Serve cold in shallow glass dishes.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,128 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Chocolate + flourtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,994 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 colour of the cream.
- Custard powder
- Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the cream its body.
- Flour
- Helps thicken the mixture and stabilise the paste.
- Swiss milk
- Adds richness and creaminess to the liquid.
The step that matters
Pouring the boiling mixture while stirring. Adding the hot liquid quickly while stirring disperses the starch evenly. Stirring keeps the thickener from clumping, which would leave lumps in the finished cream.
“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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