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Dessert

Chocolate Almond Pudding

A baked pudding made with ground almonds, sugar, cocoa, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla 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 Almond Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add the vanilla essence, sugar, almond meal, and cocoa powder, beating continuously.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into pie dishes, filling them no more than three-quarters full.

Bake

  1. Bake until set, similar to almond puddings.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + cocoa powdertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (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

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter and whites, folded in, lighten it and help it set.
Ground sweet almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavour and a tender, moist crumb.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whisked eggs.
Cocoa powder
Adds chocolate flavour and deep colour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that gives the pudding lift. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a dense, heavy result.

Swap the almond

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cocoa powder, egg, vanilla. 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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