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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

Chocolate pudding made with chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon, milk, sugar, and eggs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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.

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chocolate, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. Pour in the milk and stir well. Cover and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove the lid, stir the mixture, and press out any lumps until smooth.

  4. Return to heat and gradually stir in the sugar while boiling hot.

Cool and bake

  1. Set aside to cool completely.

  2. Once cool, stir in the beaten eggs vigorously.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven, preferably in a pan of boiling water.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set in, adding richness and creaminess.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its smooth, soft texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Eggs must be beaten light and stirred into a cooled base, not a boiling one, so they do not scramble. Baking gently in a water bath then lets the proteins set evenly into a smooth custard.

“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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