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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A chocolate filling made with melted chocolate, sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks, and hot water, baked in a pie crust.

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

Chocolate Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the chocolate over hot water.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with the sugar.

  3. Gradually stir the hot water into the sugar mixture.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Stir over gentle heat until it boils.

  6. Turn some of the hot mixture into the egg yolks.

  7. Add the egg yolk mixture back to the saucepan.

  8. Cook for one more minute.

  9. Stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla.

Assemble and top

  1. Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Use egg whites to make a meringue for the top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness to the custard.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sugar and water mixture as it heats, giving the filling body.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and depth to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the cornstarch mixture.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk mixture back to the saucepan. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid directly. Tempering them with some hot mixture first, then cooking gently, keeps the custard smooth while it thickens.

“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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