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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A sweet chocolate custard made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and salt.

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

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk until warm.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt.

  3. Slowly add warm milk to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

Serve

  1. Pour into serving dishes and chill before serving.

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

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

  3. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 custard as they set and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Cocoa powder
Provides the chocolate flavor and color.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring until thickened.. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps.

“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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