Skip to main content
Dessert

New College Puddings

A suet-based pudding with currants, breadcrumbs, and spices, fried and served with sifted sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

New College Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the beef suet, bread crumbs, currants, salt, sugar, grated nutmeg, and candied peel.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs and enough milk to achieve the right consistency.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a little butter in a pan and fry spoonfuls of the mixture until browned on both sides, about 6 to 8 minutes.

  2. Shake the pan frequently to prevent burning and turn them over when one side is cooked.

  3. Arrange on a hot dish and sprinkle with sifted sugar 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the puddings moist and rich as they fry.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set it during frying.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body that holds the mixture together.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the puddings.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Shake the pan and turn the puddings once one side is cooked. Frequent shaking and timely turning keep the sugars from scorching before the centre is set, so the puddings brown evenly instead of burning on one side.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes