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Dessert

Ciiocolate Custards

A sweet chocolate custard made by simmering chocolate, water, milk, sugar, and eggs, then baking in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Ciiocolate Custards

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

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

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Add the milk flavored with lemon peel or vanilla.

  4. Stir in the sugar and bring to a boil.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  2. Strain the beaten eggs.

  3. Gradually stir the hot mixture into the eggs.

  4. Pour the custard into a jar or jug.

  5. Place the jar or jug in a pot of boiling water.

  6. Stir continuously until thickened.

  7. Let it cool before serving.

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 main flavor and color of the custard.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until thickened. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, so stirring keeps the custard even and prevents it from curdling or scrambling on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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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