Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A milk-based chocolate pudding sweetened with sugar and salt, thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chocolate and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Sweeten the milk and bring it to a boil.

  2. Mix the grated chocolate and cornstarch with a little water.

  3. Add the chocolate and cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Boil for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with white sauce or whipped 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. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as its starch swells and sets when heated in liquid.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, giving the pudding its body and creaminess.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Add the chocolate and cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed in water before it meets hot milk, or it clumps. The mixture needs to reach a boil so the starch granules swell and thicken the pudding.

“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