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Dessert

Chocolate Custards

A chocolate custard made with chocolate, water, milk, sugar, eggs, and optional cream or isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chocolate Custards

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in a saucepan over low heat with the water until smooth.

  2. Add the milk flavored with lemon peel or vanilla and the sugar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir the hot mixture into the beaten eggs.

  5. Strain the mixture to remove any lumps.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the custard into a jar or jug.

  2. Place the jar in a pan of boiling water.

  3. Stir continuously until the custard thickens.

  4. Let it cool before serving in glasses or a dish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook and thicken it, giving it body and structure.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and, once melted, colors and enriches the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken, adding softness and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir the hot mixture into the beaten eggs. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Stirring steadily while pouring gently tempers the eggs so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, milk, sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, sugar, egg, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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