Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with milk, chocolate, cornstarch, eggs, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the chocolate until melted.

  3. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little water and add it to the milk mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them in along with the sugar and salt.

  5. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients thicken.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when it heats enough, and eggs can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring over low heat keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

“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.

More chocolate pudding recipes

Steamed 30with Meringue 6Hot 6Baked 3Sauce 3Cold 3 See all 329 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes