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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made by boiling milk, adding chocolate, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, and salt, then thickening and serving with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the chocolate until melted.

  3. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little water and add it to the milk mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them with the sugar and salt, then add to the saucepan.

  5. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream as a sauce.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as they cook.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavor and color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the pudding thickens in.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to thicken fully, and constant stirring prevents lumps and keeps the eggs from scrambling on the bottom of the pan.

“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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