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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A pie filled with a chocolate custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, egg yolks, butter, flour, and a little cold water.

  2. Add milk and grated chocolate, then beat until combined.

  3. Cook the mixture over steam until thickened, then flavor with vanilla.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pre-bake the pie crust, then fill it with the chocolate mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then gradually add sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and colour to the chocolate filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the meringue topping that stays light and browns in the oven.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it sets smoothly when cooked.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that cooks into a creamy custard.

The step that matters

Cook the filling over steam until thickened. Gentle, indirect heat lets the egg yolks and flour thicken the filling evenly. Overheating can curdle the yolks or leave lumps, so the filling should be stirred and cooked slowly until it coats a spoon.

“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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