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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A sweet glaze made by boiling sugar, water, and chocolate, then mixing with beaten egg and vanilla.

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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar, water, and chocolate together for about 8 minutes, or until it forms a firm ball when dropped in water.

  2. Beat the egg very lightly.

  3. Pour the boiled mixture into the egg and beat until stiff enough to spread, usually about 15 minutes of beating.

  4. Add vanilla extract while beating.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, when boiled, sets into the firm body that makes it spreadable.
Bitter chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and fat that give the icing its richness.
Egg
Beaten into the hot syrup, it adds body and richness to the icing.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Boil to a firm ball. Sugar syrup sets as it cools, and the boiling point determines how firm it gets. Stopping before the firm-ball stage leaves the icing too soft to hold once beaten and cooled.

“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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