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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate pudding made with grated bread, chocolate, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, topped with meringue and optional jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the grated bread and grated chocolate in a bowl.

  3. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling, then pour it over the bread and chocolate mixture.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla extract.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake for 1 hour.

  2. While baking, prepare the meringue by beating the egg whites and gradually adding sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pudding.

  4. For an extra touch, spread a layer of jelly or marmalade before adding the meringue.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Dry bread
Soaks up the hot milk and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and sets into a custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set during baking.
Grated chocolate
Adds flavour and deep colour, and melts into the bread mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the meringue.

The step that matters

Adding the meringue topping. Egg whites must be beaten with sugar until stiff peaks form, because properly whipped foam holds its shape and bakes into a stable topping. Under-whipped whites will weep or collapse.

“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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