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Dessert

Chocolate Chips

Chocolate chips made from molasses, sugar, butter, vanilla, and hot chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Chips

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. In a saucepan, combine molasses, sugar, and butter.

  2. Add vanilla extract for flavor.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches a hard candy stage.

Shape and finish

  1. Pull the candy thin and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Once cooled, dip the pieces in hot chocolate.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

New orleans molasses
Adds deep sweetness and flavor, and helps give the candy its chewy, dark character.
Sugar
Forms the candy's structure as it cooks to a hard candy stage, providing sweetness and firmness.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the candy's texture and gives it a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Hot chocolate
Coats the cooled pieces, adding a sweet chocolate layer and flavor.

The step that matters

Boil to the hard candy stage. Sugar syrup must reach the hard candy stage, a high temperature where little water remains, so the candy sets firm when cooled. Underheating leaves it sticky and soft, while overheating can scorch the molasses and make it bitter.

“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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