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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie with a buttery crust, chocolate filling, and frosted with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 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 and bake the crusts

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, milk, butter, eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into Washington pie tins and bake until golden.

Make and add the filling

  1. For the filling, melt the chocolate and mix with powdered sugar, egg yolks, and boiling milk.

  2. Pour the filling into the baked pie crusts.

Frost and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then frost the pies and brown the tops.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the crust together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, while the yolks thicken the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crust and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and help the crust rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as the acid that reacts with baking soda to lift the batter.
Chocolate
Gives the filling its main flavor and firms as it cools.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks, because under-whipped foam stays runny and collapses. Stiff whites also brown well and hold their shape on top of the pie.

“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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