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Dessert

Chocolate Custards

A chocolate custard made by dissolving chocolate in water, infusing milk with lemon peel, and cooking with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Chocolate Custards

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Custards

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Dissolve the chocolate gently in the water over low heat until smooth.

  2. Infuse the lemon peel in the milk for 30 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the milk to the chocolate, stirring constantly.

Make the custard

  1. Add the sugar and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling milk mixture over them, stirring continuously.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into cups.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the cups in a pan with 2 inches of boiling water.

  2. Cover tightly and sprinkle the cover with hot charcoal.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Let cool before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks set as they heat, giving the custard its body and firm texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and moisture that keeps the custard smooth and creamy.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and some richness to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Slowly pour the boiling milk over the yolks. Egg proteins set at high heat, so adding the hot milk gradually while stirring constantly warms the yolks evenly. Pouring too fast can scramble them and leave the custard lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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