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Dessert

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Combine sugar, melted butter, baking powder, milk, flour, and melted chocolate in a bowl, then mix until smooth.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 main structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and keeps the batter moist and pourable.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a soft crumb.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavour and dark colour.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour. Steam is gentle, moist heat that cooks the batter evenly without drying it or browning it. The pudding is only fully set when its centre is cooked through, so the full steaming time matters.

“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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