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Sauce

Chocolate Sauce

A sauce made by melting chocolate with weak syrup, brandy, and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and brandy work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 287 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scrape the fillet of chocolate.

  2. Melt the chocolate in a little weak syrup.

  3. Add the brandy and enough arrowroot to achieve the consistency of double cream.

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 + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together287 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + syruptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Brandy + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chocolate + arrowroottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Syrup + brandytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes

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 the body of the sauce as it melts into the syrup.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce without making it floury.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the chocolate.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot thickens when heated and then sets as it cools, so add it gradually until the sauce reaches the consistency of double cream. Too much makes it gluey, while too little leaves it thin.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, syrup, brandy. 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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