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Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from bread crumbs, chocolate, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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 custard base

  1. Melt the chocolate over hot water.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the scalded milk for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the sugar, melted chocolate, salt, vanilla, walnuts, and beaten eggs to the soaked bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with 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. 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. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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 and bind the bread and chocolate into a soft pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the body of the pudding.
Chocolate
Adds rich flavor and deep color to the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that becomes the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard sets. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding must bake long enough to firm. Removing it too early leaves a loose, wet center.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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