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Dessert

A Beautiful Dessert

A chocolate pudding topped with meringue and optionally colored with cochineal syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Beautiful Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk in a pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix corn starch, 4 tablespoons sugar, grated chocolate, and a little cold milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into the hot milk and boil for a few minutes until thickened.

  4. Pour the thickened mixture into a mold and set aside to cool.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, combine 1 quart of milk, 5 eggs (reserve 2 whites), and 2 tablespoons sugar in a pot.

  2. Cook the custard over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Assemble and top

  1. Once the pudding is cold, turn it out onto a shallow glass dish.

  2. Pour the cold custard around the pudding, leaving 2-3 inches of pudding exposed.

  3. Beat the reserved egg whites to stiff peaks.

  4. Gradually add 2 tablespoons pulverized sugar to the beaten whites.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the meringue over the pudding and custard.

  6. Optionally, color some meringue with cochineal syrup and place a small drop on each 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + syruptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the chocolate milk into a firm, sliceable pudding as it boils.
Eggs
Thicken the custard when gently heated and add richness; whites whipped into meringue for lift.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of both the pudding and the custard.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and custard and stabilises the meringue when added to the whites.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at fairly low temperatures and can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred, leaving a grainy custard instead of a smooth, pourable sauce.

“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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