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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

Chocolate pie with a chocolate custard filling and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pie

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 crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a pastry crust and bake it until golden.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk with chocolate, cornstarch, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and vanilla until thick.

  2. Pour the chocolate cream into the baked pastry crust.

  3. Bake the pie for about 5 minutes.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar to the whipped egg whites to make a meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Bake the pie for a few more minutes until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the chocolate cream, and whites whipped into meringue give the topping its airy structure.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the filling body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that thickens into a creamy custard.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and helps set the filling as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with powdered sugar, stabilizes the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Boiling the chocolate cream until thick. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil while stirred, and egg yolks can curdle if overheated. Cooking it to a proper thick boil sets the filling so it holds when the pie is sliced.

“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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