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Dessert

Chocolate Custard Pudding

A chocolate custard made with bread, milk, eggs, and cocoa, baked slowly until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Crumble the bread and mash it with boiling water using a potato masher.

  2. Stir in the cocoa until well combined.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, make a custard by warming the milk, then mixing in the sugar, beaten eggs, and salt.

  2. Pour the custard over the bread mixture and add vanilla.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish or custard cups.

Bake and serve

  1. Set the dish in a pan of hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Test for doneness with a silver knife.

  3. Serve cold with plain or whipped 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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Bread
Soaks up the liquid and gives the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding richness and moisture.
Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavour and dark colour throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath. Setting the dish in hot water moderates the heat reaching the custard, so the eggs set gently without curdling or becoming rubbery. Test for doneness before removing it from the oven, since an overbaked custard turns grainy and watery.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla):

  1. Cocoathe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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