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Dessert

Chocolate Creams

Chocolate cream balls made from egg white, water, vanilla, confectioner's sugar, and coated in melted chocolate.

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 Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a small glass, combine the egg white and cold water.

  2. Add the vanilla extract and beat thoroughly.

  3. Gradually mix in enough sifted confectioner's sugar to form a stiff dough.

Shape and harden

  1. Mould small pieces into the shape of thimbles and place them on a buttered pan in a cool place to harden.

Dip and dry

  1. Melt the Baker's chocolate in a saucer over a kettle of simmering water.

  2. Once the cream balls are hard, dip them in the melted chocolate using two forks.

  3. Let the excess chocolate drain off and place the balls back on the tins until dry.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Confectioner's sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, stiffening the mixture into a dough that holds its shape.
Egg white
Adds structure and binds the sugar into a cohesive, firm dough.
Baker's chocolate
Forms the outer coating, adding rich flavour and a crisp, set shell.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the sugar. Adding the sugar slowly lets it hydrate evenly, so the dough becomes stiff enough to shape without becoming crumbly or sticky.

“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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