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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding thickened with corn starch, served chilled with a whipped milk sauce flavored with vanilla and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat 1¼ cups of rich milk with ½ square of chocolate, stirring constantly until dissolved.

  2. Mix 2 rounded tablespoons of corn starch with ¼ cup of cold milk, then add to the chocolate mixture.

  3. Let it boil for 10 minutes in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and a pinch of salt.

  5. Beat well and cook for 1 minute.

  6. Flavor with ½ teaspoon of vanilla, then turn into a mold and refrigerate until ice cold.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, froth the egg white and whip it into ½ cup of boiling milk sweetened with 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  2. Add a few grains of salt, ½ teaspoon of vanilla, and a dust of nutmeg.

  3. Set on ice.

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard as it heats and sets when cooled.
Egg yolk
Enriches the custard and helps it set with a creamy texture.
Egg white
Whipped into the boiling milk to give the sauce a light, frothy body.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and color of the pudding.
Rich milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into custard.

The step that matters

Cook the starch-thickened custard. Corn starch must be heated fully to swell and thicken; if it is undercooked the pudding stays thin and tastes starchy, while stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

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