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Dessert

Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding

A chocolate pudding thickened with cornstarch, sweetened with sugar, and served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cornstarch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the sugar, salt, cornstarch, and cocoa in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir in the hot milk until smooth.

  3. Cook over boiling water, stirring until thick.

  4. Cover and cook for 30 minutes.

Mold and serve

  1. If desired, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites before molding.

  2. Turn into a wet mold, chill, and serve with cream and sugar.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy custard.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the chocolate flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the texture when used.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture thickens. Cornstarch can clump or scorch if the mixture is not stirred over the heat, so the pudding turns lumpy. Stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it gelatinizes evenly into a smooth set.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Cocoathe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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