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Dessert

Baked Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with corn starch, milk, eggs, and topped with currant jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and cinnamon work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. In a saucepan, stir together corn starch, cold milk, and salt.

  2. Add scalded milk and mix until thickened.

  3. Stir in chocolate until melted.

  4. Cover and cook for 10 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Beat egg yolks with sugar and add to the mixture along with cinnamon or vanilla.

Top and bake

  1. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and dot with currant jelly.

  2. Prepare meringue by beating egg whites until dry, then gradually add granulated sugar.

  3. Fold in extra sugar and spread meringue over the pudding.

  4. Dredge lightly with sugar and bake until golden brown.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Corn + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 into a smooth, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set with a rich texture.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and deep color of the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped into the meringue that forms the light, browned topping.

The step that matters

Cook the base until thickened. Corn starch only thickens fully when the milk mixture reaches a simmer and is cooked for a few minutes. Undercooked starch leaves the pudding thin and runny after baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, milk, chocolate, egg, sugar, cinnamon. 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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