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Dessert

Chocolate Cream Filling

A chocolate cream filling made by combining sugar, cocoa, boiling water, eggs, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate mixture

  1. Mix the sugar and cocoa powder together in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a saucepan with boiling water and boil until it reaches the soft ball stage.

Combine and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, blend the well-beaten eggs with the sweet cream.

  2. Pour the chocolate mixture over the egg mixture and beat until cold before spreading.

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

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

  2. Cocoa powder + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when boiled, helps set its firm, smooth texture.
Cocoa powder
Provides the chocolate flavour and dark colour of the filling.
Eggs
Enrich the filling and help it thicken and hold its body once combined.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a softer, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the soft ball stage, where it has enough concentrated sugar to set firm but smooth when cooled. Boiling too little leaves the filling runny, and boiling too long makes it stiff and grainy.

“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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