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Chocolate Caramel Sauce for Ice Cream

A chocolate-infused caramel sauce made with water, sugar, chocolate, arrowroot, milk, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chocolate Caramel Sauce for Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water and granulated sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the grated chocolate and arrowroot with the milk.

  3. Add the chocolate mixture to the boiling sugar mixture and boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Stir in the vanilla and serve hot over vanilla ice cream.

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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the boiling water to form the sweet base of the sauce.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and body once melted into the hot liquid.
Arrowroot
Thickens the milk and chocolate mixture as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, softening the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Add the chocolate mixture to the boiling sugar mixture. Arrowroot must be fully heated to thicken, but prolonged vigorous boiling can break down its thickening power. Adding the starch mixture to already boiling liquid and stirring well helps it disperse evenly without lumps and thicken smoothly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, 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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