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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding baked with eggs and topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Melt the chocolate and mix it with the milk and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs and 2 whole eggs together.

  3. Combine the beaten yolks with the chocolate mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the whites of the 6 eggs to a stiff froth.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar to the beaten whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top of the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 chocolate custard, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and richness of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Baking the custard until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking can make the custard curdle or weep. Bake only until the centre is just set so it stays smooth.

“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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