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Dessert

Chocolate Cornstarch

A chocolate pudding thickened with cornstarch, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Cornstarch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Bring the water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the chocolate and let it boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Thicken the mixture with the cornstarch.

  4. Add salt and vanilla to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour onto a soup plate and serve with sterilized cream, hot or 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, set pudding as it cooks.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with the cornstarch. Cornstarch must be fully heated in the boiling liquid to swell and gelatinize; if undercooked it leaves a raw starchy taste and thin texture, and if it is added to liquid that is not hot enough it can clump.

“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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