Skip to main content
Dessert

Oxford Pudding

A sweet pudding made from crushed crackers, currants, suet, sugar, nutmeg, and egg yolks, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,377 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Oxford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine crushed crackers, washed currants, shredded suet, sugar, and grated nutmeg, then mix thoroughly.

  2. Add the egg yolks and combine until well mixed.

  3. Form the mixture into balls the size of turkey eggs.

Fry

  1. Heat fresh butter in a pan and fry the balls until they are a fine light brown.

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. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Crackers
Crumbs form the bulk of the mixture and give the balls their body.
Suet
Melts during frying to add richness and moisture to the balls.
Egg yolks
Bind the dry ingredients together so the balls hold their shape.
Currants
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the balls. Fry over moderate heat so the outside browns to a light golden colour while the centre warms through. Fat that is too hot browns the surface before the interior heats, and the balls can fall apart if handled roughly before the yolks set.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes