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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with milk, chocolate, eggs, cornstarch, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and melted chocolate over medium heat.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and salt until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the egg mixture to the chocolate milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

  2. Serve chilled with whipped cream.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornstarch and eggs thicken into a pudding.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the pudding as they thicken with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sliceable pudding when heated.
Baker's chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and dark colour of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot chocolate milk. Adding the eggs too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble them. Stirring constantly while gradually adding the egg mixture keeps the eggs smooth and lets the cornstarch thicken the pudding evenly.

“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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