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Chocolate Sponge Pudding

A steamed chocolate sponge pudding made with eggs, sugar, milk, chocolate, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate 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 Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  2. Add the grated chocolate and milk alternately.

  3. Mix the baking powder into the flour and add it to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with whipped 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. Sugar + chocolatetop 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air that lightens the pudding's texture.
Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they add richness and help bind the batter.
Flour
Gives the pudding its body and structure as it sets during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Grated unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and some fat that adds richness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, which leads to a denser pudding with less rise.

“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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