Skip to main content
Drink

Cocoa for Breakfast or Luncheon

A hot cocoa beverage made with sweet milk, cocoa, sugar, and boiling water, served with optional whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cocoa for Breakfast or Luncheon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cocoa

  1. Scald the sweet milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the cocoa and sugar together, then dissolve in the boiling water.

  3. Combine the cocoa mixture with the scalded milk and boil for 1-2 minutes, beating with a wire whisk as it comes to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

  2. For luncheon, add a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each cup.

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

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

  2. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Cocoa + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and the body of the drink.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cocoa dissolve smoothly.

The step that matters

Combine and boil while whisking. Cocoa powder can clump or settle if added without thorough mixing. Whisking as the mixture comes to a boil disperses the particles evenly, and boiling for 1-2 minutes lets the cocoa fully hydrate and thicken the drink slightly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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.

You might also like

CocoaCocoa42 recipesCocoa Nut MilkCocoa Nut Milk10 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes