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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

Chocolate custard made by mixing cocoa, milk, sugar, and eggs, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chocolate

  1. Mix 1 lb of cocoa with 1 quart of milk to prepare strong chocolate.

  2. Heat the milk and stir in the cocoa until smooth.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  4. While warm, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar and let it cool.

Make and bake the custard

  1. Gradually stir in 8 beaten eggs into the chocolate mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into cups.

  3. Bake until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with a chocolate macaroon on top of each custard.

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Beaten eggs set the custard into a soft, sliceable texture as they cook.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color that define the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the cocoa and gives the custard its richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitter chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set through gentle heat, and overbaking causes them to curdle and turn grainy, so the custard should be removed once just firm.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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