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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, egg yolks, chocolate, vanilla, sugar, and 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 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. Boil the milk with the bread crumbs.

  2. While hot, add the butter and stir until melted.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add the egg yolks, grated chocolate, vanilla, and sugar.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding and brown slightly.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and thicken the mixture, giving the pudding body.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to give the pudding its structure and rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, which lightens and browns.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color of the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the egg yolks. If the milk mixture is still very hot, it can scramble the egg yolks instead of blending smoothly, leaving a grainy custard. Cooling it slightly lets the yolks thicken it evenly during baking.

“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 →

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