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Dessert

Chocolate Custard

A chocolate custard made with Spanish chocolate, milk, sugar, salt, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate paste

  1. Make a paste with the chocolate and a small amount of water.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Add powdered sugar and a little salt to the boiling milk.

  3. Beat the chocolate with some of the boiling milk until well mixed.

  4. Pour the chocolate mixture into the boiling milk while stirring continuously.

  5. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Once cool, pour the custard into 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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 custard as they set with heat and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate and yolks thicken into custard.
Chocolate
Provides the flavour and colour of the custard.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the chocolate.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and if the mixture boils too hard or the yolks are added without enough stirring, they can curdle or turn grainy. Keep stirring steadily and stop heating once it thickens.

“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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