Skip to main content
Drink

Chocolate

A hot chocolate beverage made by boiling chocolate with water, then adding milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the chocolate and water.

  2. Stir while boiling for 15 to 30 minutes, uncovered.

  3. Add the milk and bring to a boil again.

  4. Serve hot, optionally garnished with grated nutmeg.

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 + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Chocolate + nutmegtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Chocolate
Supplies the main flavour and, through its cocoa fat, a rich body to the drink.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stirring while the chocolate simmers. Chocolate sits heavily on the bottom of the pot and can scorch if left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps the heat even and the chocolate smooth as it dissolves.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Peppermintfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk. 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.

More hot chocolate recipes

Sauce 40Pudding 6Mexican 5Spiced 3 See all 84 →

You might also like

Spiced Chocolate MilkSpiced Chocolate Milk6 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes