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Dessert

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

A steamed chocolate pudding made with sugar, milk, flour, butter, chocolate, and baking powder, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Melt the chocolate and mix it with the sugar, milk, flour, melted butter, and baking powder.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve cool with plenty of whipped cream, sweetened and stiffened with egg white.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, lightening the pudding's texture.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavour and colour of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the pudding richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and forms a batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming must stay gentle and continuous so the pudding cooks through evenly. If the water boils dry or the steam drops, the centre may stay raw or the texture may turn 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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