Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A steamed chocolate pudding made with milk, chocolate, eggs, vanilla, sugar, and thickened with arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Dissolve 1 oz. of chocolate in the milk.

  3. Sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.

  4. Beat 8 egg yolks and 4 egg whites, then add to the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture and pour it into a buttered and papered mold.

Steam and rest

  1. Steam for 40 minutes.

  2. Let it settle for 10 minutes before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil 1 stick of vanilla in 1 pint of milk until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the sauce, sweeten with loaf sugar, and thicken with arrowroot.

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 + arrowroottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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
Yolks and whites set the pudding into a firm, custard-like structure when steamed.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that carries the chocolate and gives the pudding its moisture.
Chocolate
Supplies the main flavor and deep color of the pudding.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce so it coats the pudding smoothly.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture before moulding. Straining removes any bits of cooked egg and lumps, so the pudding steams to a smooth, even texture instead of a grainy one.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, chocolate, sugar, egg, vanilla, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, chocolate, sugar, egg, vanilla, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Steamed 30with Meringue 6Hot 6Baked 3Sauce 3Cold 3 See all 329 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes