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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

A peppermint-flavored chocolate cream made by boiling sugar and water, cooling, mixing, and dipping in melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate 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 Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fondant

  1. Dampen the sugar thoroughly with water.

  2. Boil the mixture until it forms threads when tested with a fork.

  3. Remove from heat and place the kettle in cold water until cool enough to handle.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish and beat with a wooden spoon until thick enough to knead.

Flavor and shape

  1. Flavor with peppermint essence and mix well.

  2. Place the mixture in cups and set in hot water to melt until creamy.

  3. Drop spoonfuls onto wax paper.

Dip and finish

  1. Once cold, dip each piece into melted sweet chocolate and return to wax paper.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Peppermint + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 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 base that cooks into a syrup and then sets into a creamy fondant.
Sweet chocolate
Forms a sweet, firm coating around each cream piece.

The step that matters

Boiling to the thread stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct thread stage before cooling. Too little cooking leaves the fondant soft and runny, while too much makes it hard and grainy once beaten.

Swap the peppermint

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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