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Dessert

Chocolate Meringue Pudding

A pudding made with boiled milk, butter, sugar, grated chocolate, egg whites, sponge cake, topped with meringue and served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Meringue Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and grated chocolate; let it boil.

  3. Once cool, stir in the egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pudding dish with slices of sponge cake.

  2. Pour the chocolate mixture into the dish and bake.

  3. Cover with meringue and let it brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Rich milk
Provides liquid and moisture, giving the base a smooth, soft body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and gives a richer mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue stay stable and brown.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the main chocolate flavour and richness to the base.
Egg whites
Set and give structure to the pudding, and whip into the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg whites only once the mixture has cooled. Egg white proteins begin to set at fairly high temperatures. Adding them to a very hot chocolate mixture can cook them unevenly, leaving lumps and a grainy texture instead of a smooth base.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, chocolate, egg, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, chocolate, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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