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Dessert

Chocolate Pudding

A baked chocolate custard topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. 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.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, chocolate, and cornstarch.

  3. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then sweeten to taste.

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding and brown in the oven.

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. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 the pudding sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard when heated, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Beaten into stiff peaks, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps balance the chocolate.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the starch and egg yolks from scorching or lumping. The mixture must reach a full thickness, because the starch and yolks set the pudding's body before it goes into the oven.

“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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