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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A custard made with chocolate, milk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, baked until lightly browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk with the yolks of 5 eggs and 1 egg white to prepare a soft custard.

Make the chocolate layer

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in ½ cup of warm milk and heat it to boiling point.

  2. Once cool, sweeten the chocolate mixture with brown sugar and add vanilla extract.

Top and bake

  1. Pour the chocolate mixture into a dish and cover with the beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

  2. Brown slightly in the oven and serve cold.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it a soft, creamy body.
Chocolate
Supplies the main chocolate flavour and richness, and melts smoothly into warm milk.
White sugar
Sweetens the dish and the beaten egg white topping.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the chocolate mixture, adding a deeper, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and yolks for the custard. Egg proteins set gently at moderate temperatures. If the mixture gets too hot or is heated too fast, the yolks can scramble and curdle instead of forming a smooth, soft custard. Stirring steadily and heating gently keeps it silky.

“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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