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Chocolate Tartlets

Chocolate tartlets made with grated chocolate, cornstarch, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and flavoring, baked in small patty pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chocolate Tartlets

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate filling

  1. Rub the grated chocolate smooth in ⅓ cup milk and heat over medium heat.

  2. Add the cornstarch dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk and stir until thickened.

  3. Pour the mixture out and let it cool.

  4. Once cool, beat in the egg yolks, sugar, and flavoring.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in small patty pans lined with pastry.

  2. Cover with beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the filling and egg whites form a light topping once beaten.
Cornstarch
Cornstarch thickens the milk and chocolate mixture so it sets into a firm custard.
Chocolate
Chocolate gives the filling its main flavor and dark color.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base that the chocolate and cornstarch thicken together.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the filling and helps the egg white topping hold its beaten structure.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch dissolved in 2 tablespoons milk and stir until thickened.. Cornstarch must be fully dissolved in cold milk before it goes in, then stirred while the mixture heats. Otherwise it clumps, and it only thickens properly once it reaches a simmer.

“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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