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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.

  2. Add the heated milk and sugar, stirring until combined.

  3. Moisten the corn starch with a little cold milk, then stir it into the hot mixture and cook for several minutes.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and stir them in along with the vanilla.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Top and bake

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites with sugar and vanilla, then spread it over the pudding.

  2. Brown the pudding in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  3. Serve hot or cold, as preferred.

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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as it thickens.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and some body to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must be fully heated and stirred for several minutes to gelatinize and thicken; undercooked starch leaves the pudding thin and with a raw, starchy taste.

“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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