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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with milk, corn starch, egg, sugar, vanilla, and shaved chocolate.

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Reserve ½ cup of milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler.

  3. Mix the cold milk with corn starch and salt.

  4. Beat the egg well.

  5. Add the beaten egg to the corn starch mixture.

  6. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  7. Beat well.

  8. Combine shaved chocolate, sugar, and boiling water in a small pan. Stir until smooth and glossy.

  9. Beat the chocolate mixture into the pudding.

  10. Cook for 2 more minutes.

  11. Remove from heat.

  12. Add vanilla.

Mold and serve

  1. Dip a mold in cold water.

  2. Pour the pudding into the mold.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Turn out onto a flat dish.

  5. Serve with whipped cream or plain cream and 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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Egg
Thickens the pudding as it cooks and adds richness and structure.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sliceable custard when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg thicken into pudding.
Shaved chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir the egg into the starch mixture before heating. Adding beaten egg to hot liquid without first tempering can scramble it. Combining it with the cool starch mixture and then bringing the milk to a boil lets the starch thicken evenly and the egg set smoothly.

“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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