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Dessert

Cream Chocolate

A layered chocolate custard made with milk, sugar, corn starch, egg whites, vanilla, and chocolate, served with a milk‑egg yolk sauce.

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 ↓

Cream Chocolate

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk and ¾ cup of sugar to a boil in a pot.

  2. When nearly boiling, add 4 tablespoons of corn starch dissolved in a little milk.

  3. Just before removing from heat, fold in the well-beaten whites of 4 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Layer

  1. Take out about 4 tablespoons of the mixture and mix it with 1 ounce of chocolate.

  2. Layer the white mixture and the chocolate mixture alternately in a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil 1 pint of milk with the yolks of 4 eggs and 4 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Once done, add vanilla extract to the sauce.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard and the sauce, giving liquid and body.
Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, giving the mousse its light, airy structure.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds its shape as it cools.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body to the sauce.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color for the contrasting layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten whites just before removing from heat. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles in the beaten whites, which give the mousse its light texture. Adding them too early, while the mixture is still very hot, can deflate them and make the mousse heavy.

“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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