Name: Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup bread crumbs; 2 cups sweet milk; 5 tablespoons grated chocolate; 1 cup sugar; 3 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs

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.

Make the pudding base

Combine bread crumbs, sweet milk, grated chocolate, and sugar in a saucepan.
Boil for about 1 minute.
Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks or whole eggs.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,128 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Bread crumbs: Thicken the milk and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Sweet milk: Provides the liquid that forms the pudding and dissolves the sugar and chocolate.
Grated chocolate: Supplies the chocolate flavor and color throughout the pudding.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps soften the crumb texture.
Eggs: Set during baking to bind the mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs off the heat. Eggs begin to set at about 160°F (71°C). Adding them to a mixture that is still very hot can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard-like texture. Stirring them in after removing the pan from heat keeps the texture even.

“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.