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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate pudding made with milk, chocolate, eggs, and sugar.

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, then add the egg yolks and sugar.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 25 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread them on top of the pudding.

  3. Brown the pudding in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken as it sets.
Grated chocolate
Adds the main chocolate flavour and richness to the base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set during baking, and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Egg whites
Beaten stiff, they trap air to form a light topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air and hold their shape on top of the pudding. Underbeaten whites slump and weep, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy.

“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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