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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A sweet dessert made by boiling sugar, milk, and water, then cooling, flavoring, and coating with melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine sugar, milk, cream of tartar, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for about 5 minutes until the mixture is waxy when tested in water.

  3. Pour the mixture into dishes based on desired flavors.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Beat the cooled mixture until smooth.

  6. Add your chosen flavoring.

Make the chocolate covering

  1. Melt the butter in a small pan for the chocolate covering.

  2. Stir in chocolate and cream until combined.

  3. Let the chocolate mixture cool slightly.

  4. Dip the cooled chocolate creams using two forks.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet, crystalline structure of the creams as the syrup cooks and sets.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup to help prevent unwanted sugar crystallisation, keeping the texture smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the chocolate covering, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and forms the coating for the creams.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the waxy stage. Boiling to the right point sets the sugar concentration. Too little cooking leaves the creams soft and runny, while overcooking makes them hard. Beating after cooling then yields a smooth, creamy texture.

Swap the peppermint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Peppermintthe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, cream, butter, chocolate. 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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