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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. If using chocolate, rasp it and make a paste with a little water.

  2. If using cocoa, mix it to a paste with a little water.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add sugar and a little salt to the boiling milk.

  3. Beat the chocolate or cocoa with some milk as it boils, then pour it into the boiling milk while stirring continuously.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and keep stirring until the mixture thickens.

  5. Once cool enough, pour the custard into glasses.

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
Yolks thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard thickens and sets in.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colour of the custard.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks while stirring. Egg yolks can scramble if the mixture is too hot or stirred too little when they go in. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

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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