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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A sweet pudding made by thickening milk with cornstarch and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate 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. Scald the milk over boiling water.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little scalded milk.

  3. Before it thickens, add the chocolate dissolved in boiling water.

  4. Stir until sufficiently cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or a sauce made of butter and sugar stirred to a 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. Sugar + chocolatetop 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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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 thickens into pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavor and color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Stir until sufficiently cooked. Cornstarch thickens only when heated with constant stirring, and its starch granules must swell fully to reach the final thickness. Stopping early leaves the pudding thin and can leave a raw, starchy taste.

“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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