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Dessert

Chocolate Pilling

A chocolate pudding made by heating milk, adding grated chocolate, mixing egg yolks and powdered sugar, then cooking until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Pilling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk until hot.

  2. Add the grated chocolate and cook for 45 minutes.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the powdered sugar with the egg yolks.

  4. Stir the sugar and egg mixture into the cooked milk and chocolate.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

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. Chocolate + milktop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the pudding as they set with gentle heat, and add richness.
Grated chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and body to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate melts into and the yolks thicken.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the warm mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar and egg mixture into the cooked milk and chocolate. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Gradually mixing them into the warm base, while keeping the heat gentle, helps them thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

“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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