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Dessert

Cho Cola Te Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, chocolate, eggs, vanilla, and arrowroot, served with a vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cho Cola Te Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 pint of new milk.

  2. Dissolve 1 oz of chocolate in the milk.

  3. Sweeten with loaf sugar.

  4. Add the yolks of 8 eggs and the beaten whites.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Pour into a buttered and papered mold.

  7. Steam for 30 minutes.

  8. Let it settle for 10 minutes before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil 1 stick of vanilla in 1 pint of milk.

  2. Reduce the mixture by half.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Sweeten with loaf sugar.

  5. Thicken with arrowroot.

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. Vanilla + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  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

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, sliceable texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness as they set when the pudding is steamed.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its flavour and colour.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture. Straining removes any cooked egg strands and lumps, so the pudding sets with a smooth, even texture.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

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