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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, nutmeg, chocolate, and a chocolate filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until light, then gradually add the sugar, beating until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour with the baking soda and cream of tartar, then stir into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a pie dish and bake for 50 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, mix the chocolate and sugar together.

  2. Slowly add the boiling milk and egg yolks, stirring continuously.

  3. Simmer the mixture for about 10 minutes until thickened.

  4. Allow the filling to cool completely before using.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the batter turn light and tender when beaten.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding as the batter sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the batter rise.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as it heats and give it a smooth, rich texture.
Chocolate
Gives the filling its flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Simmering the filling. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats. Adding the boiling milk slowly and stirring constantly tempers the yolks, and gentle simmering lets the starch and yolk proteins thicken the filling smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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