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Dessert

Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding

A chocolate pudding thickened with cornstarch, made with milk, water, sugar, and chocolate, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Scald the milk and water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chocolate to the milk and stir until melted.

  3. Mix the sugar with the cornstarch, then add to the milk mixture.

  4. Cook until thick, then cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks into a smooth, set pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the pudding is built on and gives it body.
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

Cook until thick. Cornstarch thickens only when the mixture reaches a full boil and is kept stirring, so stopping early leaves the pudding thin. Once it thickens, it sets further as it cools.

“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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