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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate custard made with milk, eggs, vanilla, and thickened with arrowroot, served with a vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 1 pint of fresh milk.

  2. Dissolve 1 oz of chocolate in the milk.

  3. Sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

  4. Add 8 beaten egg yolks and 4 beaten egg whites.

  5. Strain the mixture and pour it into a buttered and papered mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 30 minutes.

  2. Let it settle for 10 minutes before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil 1 stick of vanilla in 1 pint of milk until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the sauce, sweeten with loaf sugar, and thicken with arrowroot.

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. Vanilla + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and set the pudding as they cook, giving a firm, smooth texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding hold its shape when steamed.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colours the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and gives moisture.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture before moulding. Straining removes bits of cooked egg and any unmelted chocolate, so the custard sets smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, chocolate, sugar, egg, vanilla, sauce. 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.

More chocolate pudding recipes

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

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