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Dessert

Chocolate and Almond Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, flour, chocolate, milk, egg yolks, sugar, almonds, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate and Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour and grated chocolate, stirring until combined.

  2. Gradually add the milk and cook until boiling, then remove from heat to cool.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until creamy.

  2. Fold in the chopped almonds, then add this mixture to the cooled chocolate mixture, one spoonful at a time, beating constantly.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for one hour.

  2. Turn out the pudding and serve with hard sauce.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and a set custard-like body.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they lighten the pudding and give it a airy, tender structure.
Flour
Thickens the chocolate base so the batter holds together.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and some body in the base.
Chopped almonds
Add texture and nutty flavor; rolling them in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the base and enriches the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling the chocolate base before adding the yolks. If the chocolate base is still hot when the egg yolk mixture goes in, the yolks can scramble and curdle. Adding the yolks one spoonful at a time while beating keeps the mixture 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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