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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A milk-based chocolate pudding made with eggs, cornstarch, sugar, and chocolate, flavored with vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the sugar.

  2. Wet the cornstarch with a little milk and add it to the egg mixture.

  3. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  4. Once boiling, add the egg mixture to the milk and cook for about 5 minutes.

  5. While hot, stir in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Flavor and serve

  1. Wet the chocolate with a little water or milk, then mix it with half of the pudding.

  2. Flavor the other half of the pudding with lemon or vanilla.

  3. Serve ice cold with cream.

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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard and the whites add lightness to the pudding.
Cornstarch
Starch swells in the hot milk and thickens the pudding as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken into pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the set custard slightly.
Chocolate
Gives the pudding its chocolate flavor and color.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Egg proteins can scramble if the mixture is heated too quickly or too long, and the starch needs to cook fully to thicken. Adding the egg mixture to boiling milk and cooking gently for about 5 minutes lets the starch thicken the pudding while keeping the eggs smooth.

“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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