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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie with a buttery filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Cream together the butter, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and chocolate until smooth.

  2. Add the sweet milk and cook over medium heat until it reaches a jelly-like consistency.

Assemble

  1. Prepare puff pastry and line two pie pans with it.

  2. Pour the chocolate mixture into the prepared pie crusts.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the sugar to make meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the chocolate filling.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is golden brown.

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. Chocolate + milktop 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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they cook, helping it set.
Flour
Its starch thickens the filling as it cooks.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the filling.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the filling when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until jelly-like. Heat sets the egg yolks and activates the flour's starch, which thicken the filling. If it is not cooked long enough to thicken fully, the filling stays runny and may not hold a clean slice once baked and cooled.

“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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