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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon, milk, sugar, eggs, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

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 chocolate base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the scraped chocolate, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Pour in the milk and stir well. Cover and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the lid, stir the chocolate from the bottom, and press out lumps until smooth.

  4. While boiling hot, gradually stir in the sugar and set aside to cool.

Add eggs and bake

  1. Once cool, stir in the beaten eggs vigorously.

  2. Bake in an oven at 350°F (175°C) in a pan of boiling water until set.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Set the pudding into a firm custard as they bake.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its creamy body.
Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and richness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs only after the mixture has cooled. Beaten eggs added to very hot liquid can scramble and turn grainy. Cooling the chocolate base first lets the eggs blend smoothly, so the baked custard sets evenly and stays silky.

“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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