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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. 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.

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 1 hour.

  2. Mash the soaked crumbs until fine.

  3. Chop the chocolate and place it in a saucepan with 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of hot water.

  4. Melt the chocolate mixture, then add the milk and bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs and the white of 1 egg, then add 2 more tablespoons of sugar and mix into the chocolate mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

  3. Top with a meringue made from the remaining egg whites.

  4. 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Chocolate + sugartop 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft, custardy body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked and add richness and structure.
Milk
Soaks the bread and provides moisture that bakes into the custard.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavour and deep colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Melting the chocolate with hot water and sugar. Chocolate can seize or turn grainy if overheated or left in contact with too little liquid. Melting it gently with the sugar and hot water creates a smooth base so the custard bakes evenly without lumps.

“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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