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Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread crumbs, sweet milk, cocoa, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Chocolate Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, sweet milk, cocoa, beaten eggs, and sugar. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes or until set.

  2. Serve warm 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. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + cocoatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and form the soft, pudding-like body of the dish.
Sweet milk (evaporated)
Provides the liquid that moistens the bread and sets into a custard as it bakes.
Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavour and deep colour of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny in the centre, while overbaking can make it dry and grainy. Check that the middle barely wobbles.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Cocoathe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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