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Dessert

Chocolate Meringue

A custard base topped with a sweetened chocolate meringue baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Chocolate Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk and egg yolks in a saucepan to make custard.

  2. Dissolve powdered chocolate in warm water.

  3. Add the dissolved chocolate to the custard.

  4. Stir in corn-starch.

  5. Sweeten to taste.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add white sugar to the beaten egg whites to make meringue.

  4. Spread the meringue over the custard.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes until browned.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Chocolate + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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 as they cook and add richness.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy meringue topping.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard sets smoothly.
Powdered chocolate
Gives the custard its chocolate flavour and color.
White sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be fully whipped to hold air; any trace of fat or yolk prevents them from stiffening, and the meringue will collapse or weep.

“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.

More chocolate meringue recipes

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