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Dessert

Chocolate Cream Custard

A chocolate custard made with chocolate, boiling water, eggs, cream, and sugar, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cream Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the chocolate

  1. Scrape the chocolate and pour boiling water over it.

  2. Let it stand by the fire until dissolved.

Make and bake the custard

  1. Beat the eggs lightly, omitting the whites of two.

  2. Stir the eggs into the cream alternately with the chocolate and sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture into a dish and bake for 10 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set as they cook, giving the custard its firm, sliceable structure.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky, moist texture.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and fat for a smooth body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitter chocolate.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a dish and bake for 10 minutes.. Egg proteins set the custard as it heats. Baking too long or at too high a heat makes the proteins tighten and squeeze out liquid, so the custard turns grainy or watery.

“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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