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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate custard made with chocolate, cake crumbs, flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla.

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 Pudding

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.

Make the chocolate base

  1. Break the chocolate into small pieces and place it in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. Simmer until dissolved and cool.

  3. Melt the butter in another saucepan.

  4. Stir in the flour and cook briefly without browning.

  5. Add the milk mixture to the flour and butter, stirring until it boils.

Bake and serve

  1. Remove from heat and let cool slightly before adding the eggs and vanilla essence. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colour, and dissolves into the milk to form the base.
Flour
Thickens the mixture with the butter and milk so the pudding holds its body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form the thickening roux with the flour.
Eggs
Set during baking to give the pudding a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate dissolves into and that thickens with the flour.

The step that matters

Add the eggs after cooling slightly. If the mixture is too hot when the eggs go in, they can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling slightly lets the eggs mix evenly and set gently in the oven.

“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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