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Dessert

Oxford Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine crushed crackers, washed currants, finely shredded suet, sugar, and nutmeg. Mix in the yolks of the eggs until well combined.

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

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in fresh butter over medium heat 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
Crushed crackers form the bulk of the mixture and give it body so the balls hold their shape.
Suet
Solid fat that melts during frying, adding richness and a tender texture to the balls.
Egg yolks
Bind the crumbs and fat together so the mixture holds into balls.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of dried fruit sweetness throughout the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the balls over medium heat. Medium heat lets the outside brown to a light golden colour while the centre heats through. Too hot and the outside darkens or burns before the inside is warm, while too low and the balls absorb excess butter and become greasy.

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.

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