Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate pudding made with milk, egg yolks, butter, and chocolate, topped with a whipped egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk and sweeten it to taste with granulated sugar.

  2. Add the butter to the boiling milk and stir until melted.

  3. Cool the mixture, then add the beaten egg yolks and grated chocolate.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding powdered sugar while beating.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture evenly over the pudding and brown it nicely.

  4. Serve 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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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
Thicken the custard and enrich its texture as they set during baking.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb milk so the pudding holds together.
Grated vanilla chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and richness throughout the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set and the crumbs soak up.

The step that matters

Browning the egg white topping. Beaten egg whites need to be stiff and spread evenly over the pudding. Uneven spreading or underbeaten whites can make the topping weep or brown unevenly, so browning should be watched closely.

“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

You might also like