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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

Chocolate custard made with chocolate, milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, and cold water, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Finely scrape the chocolate and place it in a saucepan with 4 tablespoons of cold water.

  2. Set the saucepan in a pan of boiling water and stir until the chocolate dissolves into a smooth paste, about 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the milk and sugar.

  4. Mix the corn starch with a little cold milk and stir it in.

  5. Cook the mixture until it boils for 2 minutes.

Thicken the custard

  1. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of cold milk.

  2. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture.

  3. Stir until the custard thickens, but do not let it boil.

  4. Add the vanilla and cinnamon.

  5. Remove the saucepan from heat and cool for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the egg whites.

  2. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff.

  3. Gently fold the stiff egg whites into the custard.

  4. Pour the mixture into custard cups.

  5. Serve with sponge cake.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colour of the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the custard body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard when gently heated, and beaten whites add lightness when folded in.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the bitterness of the chocolate.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the custard until it thickens, without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, leaving a grainy texture. Heat gently and stop as soon as the custard coats the spoon.

“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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