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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate filling baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with the crust.

  3. Prick the crust.

  4. Bake until golden.

Make the chocolate filling

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and egg yolks.

  2. Gradually stir in boiling water and cook until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla.

  4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the baked crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread on top of the pie.

  2. Brown the pie 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cocoa powder + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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 and add richness as they set with the cornstarch.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water mixture into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff meringue topping that sets and browns on the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the bitterness of the cocoa.
Cocoa powder
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is kept cooking. If it is pulled off heat too early, the filling stays thin and will not set when cooled.

“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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