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Chocolate Meringue Pudding

A chocolate pudding topped with meringue and served with lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocolate Meringue 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 chocolate base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and grated chocolate; let it boil.

  3. Once cool, stir in the egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pudding dish with slices of sponge cake.

  2. Pour the chocolate mixture into the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Cover with meringue and let it brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Rich milk
Forms the liquid base that sets with the eggs and chocolate into a soft, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.
Grated chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavour and deep colour.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the pudding set and hold its shape when cooled.
Sponge cake
Forms a base layer that soaks up the chocolate mixture and gives the pudding body.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg whites only once the mixture has cooled. Egg white proteins begin to set when heated, so adding them to a very hot mixture can scramble them into lumps and prevent an even, smooth texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, chocolate, egg, sauce. 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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