Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chilled chocolate pudding made with milk, chocolate, corn starch, egg yolk, sugar, vanilla, and a nutmeg dusted sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Boil for 10 minutes in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Beat 1 egg yolk with 1 tablespoon of sugar and a pinch of salt, then add to the mixture and cook for 1 minute.

  5. Flavor with ½ teaspoon of vanilla, turn into a mold, and chill 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, then 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 mixture into a smooth, creamy pudding as it cooks.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps set the custard as it cooks.
Egg white
Whipped into the sauce to give it a light, foamy texture.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolk thickens only gently; if the mixture boils hard after it goes in, the yolk can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir steadily.

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.

More chocolate pudding recipes

Steamed 30with Meringue 6Hot 6Baked 3Sauce 3Cold 3 See all 329 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipes