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Dessert

Chocolate Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from stale bread crumbs, milk, chocolate, sugar, salt, vanilla, and eggs, baked until set.

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 Bread 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.

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in scalded milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Melt the chocolate in a saucepan over hot water.

Make the custard

  1. Add ⅓ cup sugar and enough milk from the soaked bread to create a pourable consistency.

  2. Combine the chocolate mixture with the soaked bread and milk.

  3. Stir in ⅓ cup sugar, salt, vanilla, and slightly beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with hard 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 + 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Stale bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding by soaking up the milk and custard.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender, custardy structure when baked.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and richness throughout the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the bitterness of the chocolate.

The step that matters

Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour. Eggs set as they heat, so baking too long or too hot can curdle and toughen the custard, while too short a bake leaves it runny in the center.

“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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