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Dessert

Chocolate Pie

Chocolate pie with a crust, chocolate filling, and frosted with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 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. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little milk and add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the sugar, melted chocolate, butter, egg yolks, and vanilla extract.

Bake and frost

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust and pour in the chocolate mixture.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. For frosting, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar.

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. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a set, sliceable chocolate filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture.
Melted chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and richness of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, airy frosting.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that the cornstarch thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be dissolved in cold or room-temperature liquid first, then stirred into hot milk; otherwise it clumps. Stirring while it heats lets the starch swell and thicken the filling evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, chocolate, butter, egg, vanilla. 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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