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Oxford Puddings

A small suet and currant biscuit pudding fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,009 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Oxford Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated biscuit, currants, chopped suet, and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks and combine to form a dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry the balls in fresh butter until they are lightly colored.

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. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the crumbs and suet into a cohesive dough that holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and rich as they cook.
Grated biscuit
Forms the body of the dough, soaking up moisture and fat to hold the balls together.
Fresh butter
Fries the balls, adding fat for browning and flavour on the outside.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in fresh butter until lightly colored. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the fat keeps the interior moist. Too much heat scorches the surface before the centre warms through.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, 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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