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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate custard made with milk, chocolate, eggs, and sugar, topped with browned whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate 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.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk and grated chocolate together in a saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks and sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 25 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Spread the stiff egg whites on top of the pudding.

  4. Brown the top in the oven.

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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the chocolate base and enrich its texture as they set.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a smooth custard.
Grated chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and richness to the pudding base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the custard stay tender.

The step that matters

Brown the top in the oven. Stiff egg whites can turn dry or overbaked if left too long, while underbaking leaves the topping pale and soft. Watching color closely lets the meringue-like layer brown lightly without losing its airy structure.

“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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