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Dessert

Chocolate Mould

A chocolate custard dessert flavored with vanilla, orange, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chocolate Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate milk

  1. Add the grated chocolate to the milk and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Flavor the mixture with vanilla extract.

Thicken the custard

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water.

  2. In another pot, boil the remaining water with the sugar and the thinly pared rind of the oranges and lemon for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the boiling mixture onto the cornflour mixture.

  4. Add the strained juice of the oranges and lemon.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks.

  6. Return the mixture to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a wet mould.

  2. Let it cool completely.

  3. Turn it out.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Grated chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and colour to the milk base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the mould its body and creaminess.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and balances the citrus.
Oranges
Add acidity and aroma through their juice and pared rind.

The step that matters

Cooking after the egg yolks are stirred in. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils hard. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly while the cornflour thickens the custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, vanilla, orange, egg, sugar. 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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