Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Cream Custard

A baked chocolate custard made with chocolate, eggs, milk, sugar, and topped with browned egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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.

Prepare the custard

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs lightly, omitting the reserved egg whites.

  3. Stir the beaten eggs into the milk alternately with the dissolved chocolate and sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture into cups and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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
Set the custard into a soft, sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the custard its creamy body.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and deep color of the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Returning the custards to the oven to brown. Egg whites are browned lightly, not baked hard. Too much heat or time can overcook the custard beneath, making it grainy or rubbery and causing the topping to weep.

“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.

More chocolate custard recipes

Pie 12Cake 9Pudding 8Frozen 6Baked 5 See all 198 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes