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Delicious Hot Chocolate

A hot chocolate made by mixing cocoa, sugar, flour, salt, boiling water, milk, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Delicious Hot Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix cocoa, sugar, flour, and salt together in a bowl.

Make the cocoa base

  1. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling water, stirring continuously.

  2. Cook over heat for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add 1 quart of boiling milk and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Stir in 1 teaspoon of vanilla and beat for 3 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Flour
Starch that thickens the liquid as it heats.
Milk
Provides creamy body and richness to the drink.
Vanilla
Adds aromatic flavour that rounds out the chocolate.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling water while stirring continuously. Flour clumps when liquid meets it all at once. Adding the water slowly while stirring separates the particles so the starch disperses evenly, and the heated starch then thickens the mixture smoothly without lumps.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, vanilla. 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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