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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A custard made with milk, chocolate, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

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 Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Set 1 quart of milk to boil.

  2. Mix 1 ounce of scraped chocolate with 1 heaping cup of sugar.

  3. Wet the chocolate mixture with 2 tablespoons of boiling milk and work into a paste.

  4. Stir the paste into the boiling milk.

  5. Add 6 well-beaten eggs and stir for 3 minutes.

  6. Strain the mixture and set it in cold water, stirring occasionally until cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in 2 teaspoons of vanilla and serve in glasses.

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. Milk + chocolatetop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set when stirred into hot milk, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and color of the custard.

The step that matters

Add 6 well-beaten eggs and stir for 3 minutes. Egg proteins set when heated, so the custard thickens gradually while stirred over heat. Stirring keeps the eggs from clumping or curdling into lumps, which would make the custard grainy.

“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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