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Dessert

Chocolate Almond Pudding

A baked chocolate almond custard made with eggs, sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and ground almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chocolate Almond 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a pan, whip the egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add the vanilla essence, sugar, ground almonds, and cocoa, beating continuously.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into pie dishes, filling them only three-quarters full.

  2. Bake until set, similar to almond puddings.

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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Almond + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Ground sweet almonds
Provides the bulk and nutty flavour of the pudding, forming its body.
Eggs
Whipped yolks and folded whites set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten egg mixture.
Allinson cocoa
Adds chocolate flavour and colour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air from whipping, which gives lift and a light texture. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the whites and makes the pudding dense.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, sugar, egg, vanilla. 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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