Name: Chocolate Almomos
Ingredients: ½ cup chocolate, softened; ½ cup sugar; almonds, well dried; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Why it works: Chocolate and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,733 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Almomos

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

½ cup chocolate, softened
½ cup sugar
almonds, well dried
coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Directions

Prepare

Mix softened chocolate with sugar until well combined.
Enclose small portions of the mixture around dried almonds.
Roll the chocolate-covered almonds smooth in your hands.
Form them into shapes like almond shamrocks if desired.

Set

Store in a cool place until set.

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.

Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).