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Dessert

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

A steamed chocolate pudding made with butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa or chocolate, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter with the sugar.

  2. Add the egg and beat thoroughly.

  3. If using chocolate, melt it and add after the sugar.

  4. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  5. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with cream or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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, so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that gives a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the crumb.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients to form a batter.

The step that matters

Adding the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Adding flour and liquid in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth. Overmixing develops gluten, which can make the pudding tough and dense.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk. 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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