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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate custard pie topped with meringue baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pie

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. Heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the yolks of 2 eggs.

  3. Stir the beaten yolks into the milk.

  4. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and 1 square of chocolate.

  5. Allow the chocolate to dissolve.

  6. Mix ½ cup sugar and 1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch together.

  7. Stir the sugar‑cornstarch mixture into the hot milk.

  8. Flavor with vanilla.

  9. Pour the mixture into a baked pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually add 3 tablespoons sugar to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Brown the pie in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Milk + chocolatetop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar‑cornstarch mixture into the hot milk. Cornstarch clumps if added directly to hot liquid, so it should be mixed with sugar first and stirred in well. Once the filling is heated enough, the starch thickens it; without thorough stirring, lumps can form and the filling may stay thin.

“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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