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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie with a sweet filling and frosted topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, stir together sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Add grated chocolate, butter, milk, and cornstarch; mix well.

  3. Place the mixture on the stove and stir until it boils.

Assemble and bake

  1. Bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Pour the chocolate filling into the baked crust.

  3. For the frosting, beat egg whites with 4 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.

  4. Spread the frosting over the pie and place in the oven to brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  3. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness to the chocolate custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the filling body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the frosting and browns in the oven.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white frosting.

The step that matters

Stir the filling until it boils. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, so stopping early leaves the filling runny. Egg yolks in the mix also need constant stirring so they cook smoothly rather than scrambling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, egg, butter, milk. 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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