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Dessert

New College Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stale bread, beef suet, currants, eggs, wine, sugar, and butter, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

New College Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the stale loaf and mix with shredded beef suet, nutmeg, salt, and currants.

  2. Beat the eggs with mountain wine and sugar, then combine with the dry mixture.

  3. Knead into a paste and let it rest for 15 minutes.

  4. Shape the mixture into flattened turkey egg-sized forms.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a dish over medium heat.

  2. Add the puddings to the melted butter, cover, and turn them often until browned.

  3. Serve hot, sprinkled with grated sugar.

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. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread loaf
Grated stale bread gives the paste body and soaks up the wet ingredients.
Beef suet
Fat that melts during cooking, keeping the puddings moist and tender.
Eggs
Eggs bind the mixture together and help it hold its shape.
Butter
Melted butter fries the outside of the puddings, helping them brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown.

The step that matters

Turning the puddings while they brown in butter. Turning them often exposes every side to the hot butter so they brown evenly. Leaving them still can scorch one side while the rest stays pale and undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

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