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Dessert

Chocolate Custards

Chocolate custard made by dissolving chocolate in water, boiling with milk, sugar, eggs, and optional cream, then cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 chocolate base

  1. Dissolve the chocolate gently by the fire in the water until smooth.

  2. Boil the mixture until it is perfectly smooth.

Make the custard

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

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Stir the boiling mixture into the beaten eggs that have been strained.

  4. Pour the custard into a jar or jug and set it in a pan of boiling water.

  5. Stir continuously until the custard thickens.

Serve

  1. 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

Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and, once melted, the color and body of the custard.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they heat and set, giving it a smooth, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and softness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir the boiling mixture into the beaten eggs. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while whisking warms the eggs gradually so the custard stays smooth.

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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