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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate custard made with milk, chocolate, sugar, eggs, and corn starch, topped with a meringue frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

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 pudding

  1. Combine boiling milk and grated chocolate in a pot, stirring well.

  2. Add sugar, egg yolks, salt, corn starch, and vanilla extract; mix thoroughly.

  3. Cook for a few minutes until slightly thickened.

  4. Pour the pudding into a dish.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar to the whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  4. Brown the meringue in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  5. If desired, add spots of jelly on top of the frosting before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with the heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks, giving the pudding body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that forms the topping and browns in the oven.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Cook the pudding until slightly thickened. Egg yolks and corn starch thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle the yolks or leave the starch thin. Stop cooking once it just thickens.

“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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