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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

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

  2. Let the milk cool.

  3. Beat the cooled milk until very light and thick.

  4. Add the egg yolks and sugar.

  5. Flavor with vanilla.

  6. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  7. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C).

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Flavor with vanilla or lemon.

Finish and brown

  1. Spread the meringue on top of the cooled pudding.

  2. Brown the meringue slightly.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Chocolate
Provides the main chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Whole milk
Supplies the liquid and body that the custard is built on.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as their proteins set during gentle heating.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the meringue its volume and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the egg foam in the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C). Gentle, low heat lets the egg yolk proteins set the custard smoothly. Higher heat can curdle the eggs or make the pudding grainy and watery.

“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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