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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with stale bread crumbs, milk, chocolate, sugar, eggs, and graham flour, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hatfield (Mass.). Congregational Church · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak 1 pint stale bread crumbs in 1 quart milk for one hour, then mash finely.

  2. Cut 2 squares chocolate finely and melt in a saucepan with 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon hot water.

  3. When melted, add the milk and the mashed bread crumbs to the chocolate mixture.

  4. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs and the white of one egg, add 2 more tablespoons sugar, and fold into the mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for forty minutes.

  2. Cover the baked pudding with a meringue made from the remaining egg whites.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

737Calories
21 gProtein
15 gFat
125 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Hatfield (Mass.). Congregational Church. 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. See the original page.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chocolate + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Egg yolks and whites enrich the custard and set it as it bakes.
Stale bread crumbs (in the method)
Soaked in milk, they give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Chocolate
Melted into the base, it provides the main flavour and colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the beaten eggs, which helps the pudding rise and stay light rather than dense.

“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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