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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate custard made with milk, breadcrumbs, cocoa, sugar, egg, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the breadcrumbs and let it soak for 10 minutes.

  3. Beat in the cocoa powder, sugar, and beaten egg until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased pie dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Sift sugar on top before serving, or serve with custard for an improved flavor.

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

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

  3. Cocoa powder + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cocoa powder + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Breadcrumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding body and a soft, moist crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Cocoa powder
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the breadcrumbs and makes the batter pourable.

The step that matters

Soaking the breadcrumbs in hot milk. The breadcrumbs need time to absorb the hot milk fully so they soften and thicken the mixture evenly. Beating in the egg before soaking is complete can leave dry pockets and an uneven texture.

“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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