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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate custard pie baked in a thin crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Mix the flour with the sugar and add to the creamed butter.

  3. Beat the eggs and milk together, then stir into the mixture.

  4. Add the chocolate and cook in a double boiler until it thickens to custard consistency.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared thin pie crust and bake until done.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Set and thicken the custard as they cook, giving the filling structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its body when cooked.
Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and helps thicken the custard as it cooks.
Milk
Supplies liquid that cooks into the custard, adding softness and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard in a double boiler. Eggs can curdle or scramble if heated too quickly. Gentle, indirect heat lets the custard thicken smoothly to the right consistency before it goes into the crust.

“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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