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Chocolate Cream Custard

A chocolate custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla.

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 Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until just boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted.

  3. Whisk together egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a bowl.

  4. Gradually add the hot chocolate mixture to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

  5. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring until thickened.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.

Serve

  1. Pour into serving dishes and chill before serving.

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. Milk + chocolatetop 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 and add richness and a smooth texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard by swelling in the hot liquid so it becomes smooth and pourable.
Dark chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and, as it melts, fat that adds richness to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate melts into and the thickeners set in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the dark chocolate.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot chocolate mixture to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too fast can scramble them. Pouring slowly while whisking gently raises their temperature so they blend in smoothly and thicken the custard without lumps.

“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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