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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate pudding topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Separate the yolks and whites of 3 eggs.

  3. Beat the yolks and 1 whole egg with sugar.

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs and chocolate.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and flavoring to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for 1 hour.

Top and brown

  1. Once cooled, beat the egg whites with a little sugar and spread on top of the pudding.

  2. Return the pudding to the oven to brown the meringue.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding, while the whites whip into the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the warm milk and give the pudding a soft, body-filled texture.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color throughout the pudding.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that gives the pudding its moisture and creamy texture.

The step that matters

Bake the pudding until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so baking too long or too hot can make the custard grainy, dry, or curdled. The pudding should wobble slightly at the centre when done.

“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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