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Dessert

Oxford Puddings

A suet and bread pudding with currants, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, candied lemon peel, and sherry or brandy, fried and served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make and cook the puddings

  1. Mix the suet, grated bread, currants, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and sherry or brandy until stiff.

  2. Divide the mixture into 7 or 8 parts.

  3. Fry the parts until light brown.

Serve

  1. 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Nutmeg + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg 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

Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the puddings moist and tender.
Grated bread
Provides the body that holds the mixture together and soaks up flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when fried.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the puddings.

The step that matters

Fry the parts until light brown. Frying over steady heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the inside sets. Too high a heat scorches the sugar and leaves the centre raw.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, sherry. 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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