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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A baked chocolate custard pie with a frosted top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. 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 shells

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

  2. Line pie tins with crust and bake the shells.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix corn starch with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with sugar.

  4. Add the beaten yolks to the corn starch mixture.

  5. Stir the mixture into the hot milk.

  6. Grate the chocolate.

  7. Mix the grated chocolate with hot water until smooth.

  8. Add the chocolate mixture to the milk mixture, stirring until thick.

  9. Fill the baked pie shells with the chocolate mixture.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add sugar to the beaten whites.

  3. Spread the frosting on top of the pie.

  4. Lightly brown the pie in the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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 + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 and add richness and colour to the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that thickens into custard.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling so it sets firm when cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that gives the topping volume and light texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the chocolate mixture into the milk until thick. Cornstarch must be stirred continuously while heating in the milk so it gelatinises evenly; stopping or heating too unevenly can leave lumps or a thin, uneven filling.

“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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