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Oxford Dumplings or Puddings

A savory dumpling made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, currants, sugar, lemon rind, nutmeg, milk, and eggs, fried and served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oxford Dumplings or Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the shredded suet, salt, bread crumbs, flour, currants, sugar, lemon rind, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Moisten the mixture with enough milk and the beaten eggs to form a stiff paste.

  3. Divide the mixture into dumplings.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the dumplings in hot fat until they are lightly browned.

  2. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the dumplings moist and tender as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and add structure to the dumplings.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb milk and give the dumplings body without making them dense.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure that helps the paste hold its shape while frying.
Dried currants
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the dumplings.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry until lightly browned. Frying in hot fat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and colour. Too low a heat lets the dumplings soak up fat and turn greasy before a crust forms.

Swap the currant

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

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

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