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Dessert

Plain Chocolate Pie

A chocolate pie with a meringue topping, made from chocolate, water, eggs, cornstarch, sugar, vanilla, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Plain Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in part of the water over low heat.

  2. Add the remaining water, egg yolks, cornstarch, and sugar; whisk together.

  3. Cook on the stove until thickened, then stir in the vanilla.

Bake the crust

  1. Line a pie plate with pie dough and place another pan of the same size inside it.

  2. Bake until the crust is half done, then remove the inner pan and continue baking until fully cooked.

Assemble and brown the meringue

  1. Pour the chocolate filling into the baked crust.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then add 2 tablespoons of sugar and spread over the filling.

  3. Return to the oven and bake until the meringue is browned.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with the starch.
Cornstarch
Thickens the chocolate filling as it cooks, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whip into a stable foam that forms the browned meringue topping.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the meringue foam.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Starch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken; undercooked filling stays runny and can soften the crust and meringue once poured in.

“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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