Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A sweet dessert made with milk, sugar, corn starch, chocolate, flour, and eggs.

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

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, make a thin batter using eggs and sufficient flour.

  2. Scald the milk over boiling water.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in a little scalded milk.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the chocolate dissolved in boiling water before the mixture thickens.

  2. Stir until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or a sauce made of butter and sugar stirred to a cream.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 thickens into the pudding when heated.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the thin batter and add richness.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the chocolate before the mixture thickens. Corn starch thickens only once it is heated and stirred, so adding the chocolate early and stirring constantly keeps the mixture smooth. Stopping too soon leaves the starch raw, and letting it stick to the pan can scorch it.

“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 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes