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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie with a meringue topping baked in a pre-baked crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk, grated chocolate, and sugar together.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch dissolved in a little milk.

  3. Add the butter, egg yolks, and one egg white.

Assemble and finish

  1. Bake the pie crust first, then pour in the chocolate mixture.

  2. Beat the remaining egg whites to stiff peaks and fold in the sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue on top and brown lightly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  4. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk and chocolate mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a rich, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the light, stable meringue topping.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving body and creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and it can clump if added undissolved. Dissolving it in cold milk first and stirring it in while the mixture is hot keeps the filling smooth and properly thickened.

“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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