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Chocolate Custard Pie

A chocolate custard pie made with chocolate, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, and baked in pie shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Custard Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in a little milk and stir into the boiling water. Boil for 3 minutes.

  2. When nearly cold, beat in the yolks of all the eggs and the whites of 3 eggs.

Make the custard

  1. Stir this mixture into the milk, season, and pour into pie shells.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until the custard is set but not more than half done.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites mixed with 2 tablespoons of sugar over the custard.

  3. Optionally bake the custard in a pudding dish or cups set in boiling water.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Eggs
Yolks and whites thicken the custard as they set, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and richness that the custard sets from.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped egg white topping hold its structure.
Baker's chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and colour throughout the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is set but not more than half done. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Stopping before the custard is fully firm keeps it tender and smooth, while underbaking leaves it runny. Overbaking makes it grainy and can cause weeping.

“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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