Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked bread, milk, chocolate, eggs, and sugar, topped with a butter and powdered sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Bread 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 pudding

  1. Soak the bread in the milk.

  2. Add the melted chocolate, eggs, sugar, and vanilla to the soaked bread mixture.

  3. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Gradually add the beaten egg white and lemon juice, mixing until smooth.

  3. Serve the pudding very cold with the 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 + 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Bread
Soaks up the milk and egg mixture, forming the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and forms the custard base.
Chocolate
Adds the main flavour and deep colour to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it blend smoothly with the butter.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding loose and wet, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Bake until just set in the centre.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes