Why it works: Chocolate and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,128 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Chocolate
Ingredients
Directions
Rasp the chocolate finely.
Boil the chocolate with water for 5 to 10 minutes until smooth.
Add the milk and bring to a boil again.
Stir quickly to froth it before serving.
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.
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Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,128 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Chocolate
- Provides the flavour and, once melted into the water, the body of the drink.
- Milk
- Forms the bulk of the drink and gives it a creamy, smooth texture.
The step that matters
Boil the chocolate with water until smooth. Chocolate does not dissolve well in cold liquid. Boiling it with a little water melts and disperses it evenly, so the drink is smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.
“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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