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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A sweet custard made with milk, eggs, corn starch, grated chocolate, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until almost boiling.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the corn starch until smooth.

  3. Add the grated chocolate and sugar to the egg mixture.

  4. Pour in enough cold milk to make the mixture thin enough to pour.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the mixture into the hot milk, stirring continuously until thickened like soft custard.

  2. Let it cool slightly, then pour 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  4. Corn + chocolatetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they thicken and give it a rich body.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it sets to a soft, smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and starch thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and some richness to the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard as it thickens. Egg proteins and starch can clump or scramble if the mixture heats unevenly or too fast. Constant stirring spreads the heat and keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

“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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