Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate custard pie with a crust, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Chocolate 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Make a pie crust and set aside.

  2. Heat milk, sugar, and grated chocolate together in a saucepan.

  3. Mix corn starch with a little cold milk, then add to the saucepan along with the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Cook until thickened, then pour into the crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites with 2 tablespoons sugar until stiff peaks form, then spread on top of the pie.

  2. Brown slightly in a 350°F (175°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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Corn + chocolatetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites whip into a meringue topping that browns.
Corn starch
Gelatinizes when heated with the milk, thickening the chocolate filling so it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whites whip to stiff peaks.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling, which thickens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Starch must reach a boil with the liquid to fully gelatinize and thicken. Undercooked filling stays thin and may not set once cooled, while the egg yolks also need heat to thicken safely.

“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.

More chocolate pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 137 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes