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Chocolate Cream or Custard

A chocolate custard made by heating milk, adding chocolate, mixing with eggs and sugar, baking, and topping with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream or Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Stir in the grated chocolate and let it warm for a few moments.

  3. Remove from heat and cool.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and 2 egg whites with the sugar until well combined.

  5. Pour the cooled milk mixture over the egg mixture.

  6. Flavor as desired and bake in cups or a large dish until set.

Finish and serve

  1. Make a meringue with the remaining egg whites and top the custard before serving.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a smooth custard.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color throughout the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the custard set, and whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and chocolate.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set through gentle heat, and overbaking makes the proteins tighten and squeeze out water, leaving the custard grainy or weepy. Remove it once it is just set.

“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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