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Dessert

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

A steamed pudding made with egg, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, melted chocolate, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, melted chocolate, and butter until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 1 hour until cooked through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding turns out light.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavour and a rich, dense texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richer mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steam heats the pudding gently and evenly, so the centre sets without drying the outside. Stopping too early leaves the batter raw in the middle, while overcooking makes the crumb tough and rubbery.

“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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