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Dessert

Cocoa Pudding

A baked pudding made from stale bread, milk, cocoa, sugar, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Cocoa Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil the bread in the milk until soft and mashed.

  2. Add the cocoa mixed with a little hot water, sugar, and vanilla.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add the beaten egg yolks.

Bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a buttered dish and bake for 1 hour.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

Stale bread
Soaked and mashed in milk, it forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks help set the custard while whipped whites lighten the texture.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture for a tender, custardy crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the bitterness of the cocoa.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives the pudding its lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the pudding bakes up dense rather than light.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, sugar, egg, vanilla):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Cocoathe original
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, sugar, 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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