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Dessert

Chocolate Custard Pudding

A chocolate custard pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, corn starch, and vanilla, topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve corn-starch in 2 tablespoons of milk.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with 2 tablespoons of milk.

  3. Combine the corn-starch mixture and the egg yolks.

  4. In a double boiler, heat the remaining milk until boiling.

  5. Stir in the grated chocolate and boil for 5 minutes until dissolved.

  6. Strain the mixture through a fine wire strainer back into the boiler.

  7. Bring to a boil again and stir in the corn-starch and egg mixture.

  8. Add salt and sugar, stirring often, and cook for 6 to 8 minutes.

  9. Pour the pudding into a dish and add vanilla.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, add 1 tablespoon of sugar, and spread on top of the pudding.

  2. Brown the top delicately in the oven.

  3. Serve cold without sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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
Yolks thicken the custard and whites form the meringue topping.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk and chocolate mixture into a smooth pudding as it heats.
Grated chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavour and colour as it dissolves into the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg yolks thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay stiff and glossy.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and starch mixture back to the boiling milk. Egg yolks can curdle if they meet very hot liquid too fast. Stirring constantly while the mixture returns to a boil lets the starch thicken and the yolks set smoothly.

“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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