Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Chocolate Drops
Ingredients
Directions
Make the centers
Boil sugar and water for five minutes.
Place the saucepan in cold water and beat until cool enough to form balls.
Coat and finish
Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a boiling tea kettle.
Roll the cooled balls in the melted chocolate using a fork.
For cream almonds, mold an almond into the center of each ball and roll in coarse sugar.
For chocolate-covered walnuts, mold walnut halves into soft sugar and roll in chocolate.
Place finished drops on buttered paper until cold.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together15,404 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the syrup that hardens into the soft candy centers as it cools and is beaten.
- Baker's chocolate
- Melted to form the coating that encloses each drop.
The step that matters
Beating the syrup until cool. Beating the boiled sugar syrup as it cools encourages small sugar crystals to form, producing a creamy, firm center. Stop too early and the mixture stays runny; beat too long after it sets and it becomes hard to shape.
“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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