Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A sweet milk pudding made with sugar, corn starch, chocolate, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it is boiling hot.

  2. Add the sugar, corn starch, and chocolate to the hot milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then remove it from the heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding cold with sweet cream and sugar on top.

  2. Flavor with vanilla to taste.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients thicken and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Corn starch
Thickens the pudding as its granules swell and gel when heated in the liquid.
Baker's chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor, dark color, and richness from its cocoa fat.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches boiling temperature. Stopping early leaves the pudding thin and can leave a raw starchy taste, so the mixture should be brought all the way to a boil before it is taken off the heat.

“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.

More chocolate pudding recipes

Steamed 30with Meringue 6Hot 6Baked 3Sauce 3Cold 3 See all 329 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipes