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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate custard made with milk, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 chocolate custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the dissolved chocolate to the boiling milk.

  3. Once nearly cold, stir in the beaten egg yolks and sugar.

  4. Add vanilla extract and mix well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, like custard.

Top and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and bake for an additional 3 minutes.

  3. Let cool and serve chilled.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that sets into a creamy custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff, airy topping that holds its shape.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and colour of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the chocolate milk. If the milk is still too hot when the beaten yolks go in, they can scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Letting the mixture cool nearly to room temperature first helps keep the custard silky.

“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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