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Dessert

Chocolate Dessert

A chilled chocolate custard made with milk, corn starch, chocolate, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and served with cream.

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 Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it reaches boiling point.

  2. Dissolve the corn starch in warm milk and add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the grated chocolate, beaten eggs, sugar, and salt. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

Serve

  1. Serve cold 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as it thickens.
Grated sweet chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Starch granules swell and thicken the liquid only when heated while being stirred; stopping early leaves it thin, and stirring too little while heating can scorch or lump the mixture on the bottom of the pan.

“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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