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Chocolate Cream Custard

A chocolate custard baked in cups, finished with browned egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scrape the chocolate and pour boiling water over it, then let it dissolve over the fire.

  2. Beat the egg yolks very lightly, omitting the whites of two eggs.

  3. Gradually stir the yolks into the milk, alternating with the dissolved chocolate and sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture into cups and bake for 10 minutes.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites with a little sugar and place on top of the custards.

  2. Return to the oven and brown lightly.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 and give it a rich, smooth set.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a custard.
Best chocolate
Supplies the main flavour and colour of the custard.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the yolks into the milk. Adding the egg yolks slowly, while stirring, tempers them so they do not scramble when they meet the warm mixture. Gentle heat then lets the custard set smooth instead of curdled.

“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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