Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix 3 tablespoons of flour with ½ cup of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  3. Melt the chocolate in a pan in the oven or in boiling water.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the flour mixture and stir until smooth.

  5. Return to the stove and stir until thickened.

  6. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light.

  7. Combine the egg mixture with the chocolate and vanilla.

Bake and top

  1. Pour into the pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown slightly 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets smoothly rather than staying runny.
Eggs
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness and structure to the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens with the flour and eggs.
Unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deepens the color of the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, adding airy structure.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the flour mixture and stir until smooth. Starch in flour needs to be fully dispersed in liquid before heating; stirring while adding the hot milk prevents lumps, and the thickening only happens properly once the mixture is hot enough.

“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.

More chocolate pie recipes

Filling 3 See all 137 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes