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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A custard made with chocolate, milk, eggs, and sugar, topped with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Prepare a soft custard by heating the milk and whisking in the yolks of five eggs.

  2. Dissolve the chocolate in ½ cup of warm milk and heat to boiling point.

  3. Once cool, sweeten the chocolate mixture with brown sugar and add vanilla extract.

  4. Combine the chocolate mixture with the custard and pour into a dish.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff, adding a little sugar, and spread over the top.

  2. Brown slightly in the oven and serve cold.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour, and thickens the custard as it melts into the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the chocolate and sugar evenly.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms a light meringue topping that browns lightly in the oven.
White sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold its stiff, glossy structure.

The step that matters

Whisking the yolks into the hot milk. Egg yolks scramble if added too hot or too quickly. Adding them gradually to warm milk and heating gently lets the proteins thicken the custard smoothly.

“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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