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Dessert

Chocolate Mould

A sweet dessert made by mixing milk, potato flour, wheatmeal, cocoa, sugar, and vanilla, then baking in a mould.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Smooth the potato flour, wheatmeal, and cocoa with some of the milk.

  2. Add sugar to the remaining milk.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Thicken with the smoothed ingredients.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

  6. Add the vanilla and mix well.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a wetted mould.

  2. Let it cool.

  3. Turn out.

  4. Serve plain or with cold white sauce.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Potato flour
Thickens the milk into a firm, smooth mould that holds its shape when turned out.
Fine wheatmeal
Adds body and thickening so the mixture sets rather than staying liquid.
Cocoa
Gives the mould its chocolate flavour and colour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starches thicken and set.

The step that matters

Thicken with the smoothed ingredients. Starch must be smoothed in cold milk first, then added to boiling milk while stirring, so it disperses evenly without lumps. Simmering then cooks the starch fully, which is what makes the mould set firm when cooled.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, cocoa, vanilla, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, cocoa, vanilla, 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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