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Drink

Iced Cocoa

A chilled chocolate drink made with cocoa, sugar, boiling water, vanilla or cinnamon, served over crushed ice and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Iced Cocoa

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cocoa base

  1. Mix the cocoa and sugar thoroughly.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Let it cool completely.

Flavour and serve

  1. Stir in the vanilla extract or cinnamon.

  2. Serve over crushed ice in glasses and top with whipped cream.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

Cocoa
Gives the drink its chocolate flavour and dark colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar and hydrates the cocoa into a smooth liquid.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and richness, and a cool, creamy topping.

The step that matters

Mix the cocoa and sugar thoroughly before adding the water. Cocoa powder clumps when it meets liquid unless it is well mixed with sugar first, which spreads the particles so they dissolve evenly. The mixture must also cool completely before it meets ice, or the ice melts and thins the drink.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, vanilla. 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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