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Dessert

Chocolate Custard, Baked

A baked chocolate custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, grated chocolate, vanilla, topped with meringue and red jelly.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the grated chocolate and simmer for 2 minutes until dissolved.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, then add to the hot chocolate mixture and stir for 1 minute.

  4. Prepare cups in a pan of boiling water, half-submerging them to prevent bubbling over.

  5. Pour the mixture into the cups and cook slowly for about 20 minutes until firm.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, whip the egg whites to a meringue with a little powdered sugar.

  2. Top each custard with meringue and add a piece of red jelly.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 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 thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping for structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when gently heated.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and dissolves into the hot milk to colour the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard slowly in a water bath. Gentle, indirect heat lets the egg proteins set evenly into a smooth custard. Fast or direct heat can curdle the eggs and make the texture grainy or cause bubbling over.

“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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