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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with chocolate, milk, eggs, cornstarch, vanilla, almonds, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Dissolve the chocolate in hot milk.

  2. Sweeten to taste and add vanilla.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and cornstarch together.

  4. When the milk is boiling, stir in the egg mixture.

  5. Cook until thickened, then pour into a serving dish.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites and spread on top.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped almonds and coarse sugar.

  3. Brown slightly under the broiler.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colour of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate dissolves into and the custard sets from.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as it cooks, and whites form the light topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the pudding sets smoothly when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle if the custard overheats, and cornstarch needs to reach a boil to thicken fully. Cook gently and stir constantly, then remove from heat once it coats a spoon.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, egg, vanilla, sugar. 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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