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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A chocolate custard dessert made with milk, eggs, sugar, and chocolate, topped with a beaten egg white crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

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 custard

  1. Heat the milk and whisk in the egg yolks to prepare a soft custard.

  2. Dissolve the chocolate in ½ cup of warm milk and heat to boiling.

  3. Once cool, sweeten the chocolate mixture with brown sugar and add vanilla.

  4. Combine the chocolate mixture with the custard and pour into a dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff, adding a little sugar, and spread over the top.

  2. Brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) oven and serve cold.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 milk into a soft custard as they set with gentle heat.
Egg white
Beaten stiff, it forms a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and moisture.
White sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it hold its stiff structure.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks in the milk. Egg yolks set into custard only with gentle heat. If the mixture gets too hot, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy, so the custard should be cooked slowly and stirred.

“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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