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Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and butter, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Scald or boil the milk.

  2. Add the bread crumbs and chocolate to the milk.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar and beaten egg yolks, then add the butter.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, beat the egg whites with 6 tablespoons of sugar for the meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pudding.

  4. Bake until light brown.

  5. Flavor both the meringue and pudding with vanilla.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the pudding a soft, sliceable body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its bulk and tender texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Chocolate or cocoa
Provides the main chocolate flavor and darkens the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that softens the bread and sets with the eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in off the heat. Adding beaten yolks to very hot milk can scramble them into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat first lets the yolks blend smoothly and thicken gently as the custard sets.

“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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