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Dessert

Chocolate Custard Pie

A chocolate custard pie with a meringue topping baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whole egg together.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, and cocoa to the egg mixture.

  3. Slowly add the hot milk.

  4. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  5. Add vanilla for flavor.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Whip the egg whites to make meringue.

  4. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whole egg thicken the custard as they set during baking.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture for the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.
Cocoa
Gives the custard its chocolate flavor and color.
Egg whites
Whipped into meringue, they form a light foam that tops the pie.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot milk. Adding hot liquid to beaten eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring gradually while whisking tempers the eggs so the custard stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vanilla, egg, 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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