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Dessert

Princeton College Puddings

A sweet bread pudding made with suet, currants, citrus, eggs, butter, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Princeton College Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Grate the bread and mix it with suet, currants, citron, orange, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then mix them into the mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls the size of a goose egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Gently stew the balls in the butter, turning them two or three times until they are a fine light brown.

  3. Mix a glass of brandy into the batter 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 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 add richness and structure to the balls.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the other ingredients.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and rich as they cook.
Butter
Browns the outside of the balls in the pan and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown.

The step that matters

Stewing the balls in butter. Turning them gently and cooking over medium heat lets the outside brown evenly without burning. Too much heat scorches the sugar and butter before the centre is set.

Swap the orange

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

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

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