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Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, chocolate, and nuts, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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 the base

  1. Soak bread crumbs in scalded milk until soft.

  2. Cut chocolate into pieces, add boiling water, and cook until smooth.

  3. Combine the chocolate mixture with the soaked bread mixture.

Add the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg, then mix in sugar and salt.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the bread mixture, then add vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Serve with plain or whipped cream or lemon sauce.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Egg
Sets during baking to bind the custard and give structure to the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard base.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavour and rich colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Combining the egg mixture with the bread mixture. Adding beaten egg to a warm base can scramble it if the mixture is too hot, so it should be combined gently and evenly. Thorough mixing lets the egg set smoothly and evenly during baking, giving a uniform, custard-like texture.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk, egg, chocolate, vanilla. 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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