When: June 26
Chocolate pudding is deceptively simple: milk, eggs, cornstarch, sugar, and chocolate on a stovetop. The homemade version and the boxed version are different enough that it's worth making both to understand the gap. The technique is the same as pastry cream and unlocks a dozen other preparations.
Chocolate pudding from scratch is a 15-minute project that ruins boxed pudding forever — in the best possible way.
In 1934, Jell-O introduced instant chocolate pudding — a powder that thickened without heat when stirred into cold milk. The mechanism was modified starch and calcium phosphate reacting with the dairy's minerals, requiring no cooking and no risk of curdling. It was an engineering solution to a domestic problem: the cooked custard pudding that Fannie Farmer had documented in her 1896 cookbook required time, attention, and the possibility of scrambled eggs. The instant version democratized chocolate pudding by removing every technical barrier. The original, pre-instant pudding that the box replaced had a longer history. English "puddings" — a catch-all term for dishes cooked in enclosed vessels, often mixed with suet and grains — evolved over centuries from savory to sweet preparations. By the 19th century, chocolate had become cheap enough for middle-class kitchens, and egg-thickened chocolate custards appeared in cookbooks across Britain and America. The cornstarch-thickened version...