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Dessert

Chocolate Cream Pie

A chocolate pie with a buttery batter and chocolate filling topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Cream 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 cake batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter, then beat in the milk and add the baking soda.

  2. Mix in the flour and cream of tartar.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  4. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter last.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in layer cake pans at 350°F (175°C).

  2. For the filling, combine the grated chocolate, sugar, and a little milk in a saucepan.

  3. Boil and thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Spread the filling between the baked layers.

Finish

  1. Top with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and an airy structure to the batter, while yolks add richness.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to give the cake its structure, and it thickens the chocolate filling.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
An acid that stabilises the beaten egg whites and works with the baking soda to aid rising.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped and gently folded; stirring hard deflates them, so the layers bake up flat and dense instead of light.

“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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