Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Bavarian Cream

A chilled dessert made with milk, cream, sugar, gelatin, chocolate, vanilla, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Bavarian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Whip the cream and grate the chocolate.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk, then add the chocolate and gelatin, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Remove from heat, then add the sugar and vanilla.

  3. Pour into a tin basin to cool, stirring continuously until it thickens.

Set and serve

  1. Gently fold in the whipped cream until well mixed.

  2. Transfer to a mold and refrigerate until hardened.

  3. Serve with whipped cream around the base.

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

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

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable cream as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness, and whipped, it lightens the texture of the set dessert.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the gelatine and chocolate dissolve into.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and deep colour of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream before the mixture sets. Gelatine firms as the custard cools. If the whipped cream is folded in too late, the mixture is too stiff to blend evenly, leaving lumps and deflating the airy cream.

“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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes