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Chocodate Custards

A chocolate custard made by dissolving chocolate in water, adding milk, sugar, eggs, and optionally cream and isinglass.

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

Chocodate Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

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

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the milk flavored with lemon peel or vanilla and sugar.

  3. Once boiling, stir in the well-beaten eggs that have been strained.

Thicken and serve

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

  2. Stir continuously until the custard thickens.

  3. 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.

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 chocolate flavor and color of the custard.
Eggs
Set as they heat, thickening the custard into a smooth, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken and gives the custard its creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until the custard thickens. Egg proteins set with gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if they overheat or sit still. Constant stirring over boiling water spreads the heat evenly, 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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