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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A chocolate pudding made with cocoa, flour, egg, milk, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and flour, and mix well.

  3. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk and stir.

  5. Flavor with vanilla.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream when cold.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the pudding body and structure.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the pudding a smooth, set texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the cocoa or chocolate.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the pudding.
Cocoa or chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and colour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk and stir. Egg proteins can scramble or curdle if the mixture is added carelessly or left unstirred. Adding it to the hot milk while stirring constantly lets the starch and egg thicken the pudding evenly and smoothly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, sugar, vanilla. 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.

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