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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A custard-like pie made with milk, chocolate, sugar, cornstarch, and eggs.

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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in the milk using a double boiler.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix in the sugar.

  3. Stir the yolk mixture into the hot milk.

  4. Blend the cornstarch in a little cold milk and add it to the mixture.

Make the meringue

  1. Use the egg whites with powdered sugar to make a meringue for frosting.

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. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate dissolves into and the filling sets from.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and richness of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they cook, giving it a creamy, custard-like body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling by swelling in liquid when heated.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the meringue frosting its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Stir the yolk mixture into the hot milk. Hot liquid can scramble egg yolks if they meet it too quickly. Adding the yolks gradually while stirring warms them evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly instead of turning grainy.

“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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