Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A steamed chocolate pudding made with flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, milk, butter, and melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the flour, sugar, and baking powder together in a bowl.

  2. In another bowl, mix the milk and eggs.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the milk and egg mixture, stirring well.

  4. Add the melted chocolate and mix until combined.

  5. Fold in the melted butter gently.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, cover tightly, and steam for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the batter as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the melted butter gently.. Overmixing once the batter is combined develops gluten and knocks out the air from the baking powder, making the pudding dense rather than light.

“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

You might also like