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Dessert

Chocolate Cream Pie

A chocolate custard filling topped with meringue 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: 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 Cream 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 filling

  1. Mix corn starch with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Combine the remaining milk, sugar, and powdered chocolate in a double boiler.

  3. Stir in the corn starch mixture and butter, cooking until thick.

  4. Pour the chocolate mixture into a baked pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add granulated sugar and vanilla, continuing to beat until glossy.

  3. Spread the meringue over the chocolate filling.

  4. Lightly brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven, watching closely.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the chocolate milk mixture into a sliceable custard as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the structure of the meringue topping.
Powdered chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that the starch thickens.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Corn starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred constantly. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny, so it may not set when cooled.

“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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