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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

A pie with a chocolate custard filling baked in a crust and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk, sugar, and chocolate together in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold milk, then add it to the saucepan.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and let the mixture come to a boil.

Bake and assemble

  1. Line a pie tin with pie crust and bake until golden.

  2. Pour the chocolate cream into the baked pie crust.

  3. Make a meringue with the two egg whites and spread it 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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the chocolate cream filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help thicken it as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream when boiled.
Grated chocolate
Gives the filling its chocolate flavor and color.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg yolks and let the mixture come to a boil. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if added to hot liquid too quickly. Tempering them with hot mixture first and stirring constantly keeps the filling smooth, and the cornstarch needs a full boil to reach its full thickening power.

“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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