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Dessert

Chocolate Podding

A baked chocolate pudding made with soaked bread crumbs, sweet milk, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Podding

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.

Prepare the pudding base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in sweet milk for half an hour.

  2. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together with the butter.

  3. Melt the grated chocolate.

  4. Add the melted chocolate to the mixture. Mix the mixture well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes.

  2. While baking, beat the egg whites until light.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and vanilla to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  5. Brown the meringue slightly before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that gives a light, airy topping.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and makes the pudding moist.
Grated chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites into a meringue. Egg whites must be beaten until light and the sugar added gradually so they hold air and form a stable foam. Under-beaten or deflated whites will not give a light topping, and it may weep or collapse during baking.

“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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