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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A custard made with milk, chocolate, sugar, vanilla, egg yolks, and folded egg whites, baked until set.

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

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 base

  1. Stir the grated chocolate into the milk and sweeten with sugar and vanilla.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Add the eggs

  1. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the cooled mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Serve warm.

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 that sets into a custard when heated with the eggs.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and richness to the custard base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they add lightness and airy structure to the baked custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yolks. Egg yolks scramble when added to very hot liquid. Cooling the chocolate milk first lets the yolks thicken gently and evenly instead of curdling.

“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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