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Dessert

Oxford Puddings

A sweet pudding made from bread crumbs, suet, currants, and spices, formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Oxford Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, currants, nutmeg, brown sugar, and salt.

  2. Add rose water and brandy or rum, mixing to form a stiff paste with cream and the beaten egg yolks.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in hot butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve with pounded loaf sugar sprinkled on top.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the paste and absorb the liquids to give body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to the stiff paste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown when fried.
Currants
Add sweet, chewy bursts of fruit throughout the balls.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in hot butter. The butter must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the balls soak up grease and turn soggy before they develop a golden crust.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, sugar, rose, brandy, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, sugar, rose, brandy, cream, egg. 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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