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Dessert

Mocha Frosting

A frosting made with cocoa, frosting sugar, hot coffee, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and coffee work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Mocha Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine cocoa, frosting sugar, and hot coffee.

  2. Add butter and mix until smooth and well combined.

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. Cocoa + coffeetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cocoa + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Cocoa + walnuttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dry cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and a deep colour to the frosting.
Frosting sugar
Sweetens the frosting and gives it body as it dissolves into the liquid.
Hot coffee
Dissolves the cocoa and sugar and deepens the mocha flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the frosting.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cocoa, sugar, coffee, butter):

  1. Nutsfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, sugar, coffee, butter. 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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