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Dessert

New College Pudding

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

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

Make the dough

  1. Grate the stale loaf and mix with shredded 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 into flattened turkey egg forms.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt butter in a dish over a clear fire or stove.

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

  3. Serve hot 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
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the egg and wine to hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and help set the puddings as they cook.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the puddings moist and rich in texture.
Butter
Fries the puddings, promoting browning and a crisp outer surface.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Turning the puddings in the butter. Turning often while covered lets the outside brown evenly without burning, while the covering traps heat so the centre cooks through.

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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