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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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 filling

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

  2. Heat the grated chocolate and milk together in a saucepan until melted.

  3. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together in a bowl until creamy.

  4. Add the chocolate mixture to the egg yolk mixture and stir in the vanilla.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then spread over the pie filling.

  3. Brown the meringue in the oven for a few 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. 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. Chocolate + milktop 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 filling as they set and add richness to the custard.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and, melted into milk, gives the filling its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the beaten egg mixture.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites under-whipped or with any trace of fat or yolk will not hold a stiff foam, so the meringue can weep or slump. Spread it onto the filling so it touches the crust edge to seal.

“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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