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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from milk, sugar, chocolate, eggs, and cornstarch, topped with a whipped egg‑white frosting.

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Reserve 1 cup of milk for mixing the ingredients.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, sugar, and chocolate. Heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. In a bowl, whisk together the whole egg, egg yolks, and cornstarch with the reserved milk until smooth.

  4. Gradually add the egg mixture to the thickened milk, stirring constantly.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and let it cool.

Frost and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with enough sugar to stiffen, then add vanilla extract.

  2. Spread the frosting over the cooled pudding and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 3 minutes to brown.

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

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

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding that thickens when heated.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and helps set the pudding's body as it melts into the milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their proteins and fat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the pudding body.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff, airy frosting that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Gradually add the egg mixture to the thickened milk, stirring constantly.. Adding the eggs too quickly or without constant stirring can scramble them. Stirring while adding them keeps the proteins dispersed so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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