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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate custard made with milk, eggs, bread crumbs, sugar, butter, and vanilla.

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

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bread crumbs and sugar; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and pour over the grated chocolate, stirring until dissolved (about 10 minutes).

  4. Add vanilla and butter, then mix in the well-beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and place it in a pan of water.

  2. Bake until firm, then cool and chill.

  3. Serve with whipped 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the pudding its creamy body.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk mixture and add body to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens its flavor.
Grated chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. Placing the baking dish in a pan of water moderates the heat around the custard. Gentle heat keeps the eggs from overcooking, which would make the pudding grainy or curdled.

“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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