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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A custard made with chocolate cake, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and corn starch.

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

  1. Dissolve the chocolate cake in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, and corn-starch until smooth.

  3. Pour the hot milk mixture over the egg yolk mixture.

  4. Return to the stove and heat for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

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

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

  4. Chocolate + corntop 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

Chocolate cake
Adds chocolate flavor and body to the milk base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the custard sets in.
Egg yolks
Proteins set with gentle heat to thicken and enrich the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the chocolate flavor.
Corn-starch
Thickens the custard as it heats and swells in the liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the custard on the stove while stirring constantly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they overheat or heat unevenly. Constant stirring spreads the heat, letting the starch and egg proteins thicken the custard smoothly before it cooks too far.

“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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