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Dessert

Chocolate Sauce

A chocolate sauce made with grated chocolate, sugar, butter, water, cinnamon bark, served hot with cream and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the grated chocolate and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter, water, and cinnamon bark to the mixture.

  3. Cook over medium heat until it reaches the soft ball stage.

  4. Remove the cinnamon bark.

Serve

  1. Pour hot cream over each serving of the sauce.

  2. Sprinkle chipped nuts over the cream if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Grated chocolate
Provides the main flavor and, as it melts, the body of the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and thickens it as it cooks to the soft ball stage.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, glossier texture and richer mouthfeel.
Cinnamon bark
Infuses warm, aromatic spice flavor into the sauce while it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup thickens as its temperature rises, so stopping too early leaves a thin sauce and going too far makes it stiff and grainy as it cools. Watch closely over medium heat for the correct consistency.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, sugar, butter, cinnamon, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, butter, cinnamon, cream. 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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