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Dessert

Oxford Puddings

A fried sweet pudding made from bread crumbs, suet, currants, spices, and eggs.

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

Prepare

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

  2. Add rose water and brandy or rum.

  3. Mix in enough cream to form a stiff paste.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls until golden brown.

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 and body that hold the paste together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist while frying.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour.
Cream
Moistens the crumbs so they form a stiff, shapeable paste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the fat in the suet melts and keeps the centre moist. Too little heat leaves them pale and greasy; too much burns the outside before the inside is cooked through.

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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