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Dessert

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

A steamed chocolate pudding made with flour, baking powder, sugar, chocolate, milk, salt, 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. Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, melted chocolate, milk, salt, and melted butter in a bowl and mix until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with foam sauce.

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender crumb.
Chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavor and some richness to the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour. Steam must stay steady and the mold must be sealed so the pudding cooks through gently. Too little steam or lifting the lid lets temperature drop, leaving the pudding dense or uneven.

“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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