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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked bread, eggs, chocolate, milk, sugar, and salt, baked and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in water, then drain it.

  2. Melt the chocolate.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread, egg yolks, melted chocolate, milk, salt, and sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the pudding.

  2. Return to the oven to brown the top.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Bread
Soaked bread gives the pudding its body and soaks up the custard.
Egg yolks
Egg yolks set the custard and add richness and structure.
Milk
Milk provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and that sets with the eggs.
Sweet chocolate
Chocolate provides the main flavour and colour of the pudding.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the custard and helps it brown on top.
Egg whites
Beaten whites form a stiff, airy topping that adds lightness.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks, since underbeaten whites spread flat and do not puff or brown well. Overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy, so stop once they hold stiff peaks.

“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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