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Dessert

College Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with breadcrumbs, suet, currants, citron, eggs, milk, sugar, brandy, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

College 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. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs and sugar.

  2. Beat in the eggs and milk until well mixed.

  3. Add suet, currants, citron, a splash of brandy, and a pinch of nutmeg, then mix until all ingredients are combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden brown.

  3. Let cool slightly before serving.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that the egg and milk mixture holds onto.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and combines with the eggs to form the set custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the pudding wet and loose, while overbaking dries it out. Watch for a firm center and even browning.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, milk, brandy, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, milk, brandy, nutmeg. 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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