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Dessert

New-College Puddings

A currant and suet pudding made with butter, eggs, and wine.

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 Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding mixture

  1. Grate the crumb of a stale two-penny loaf.

  2. Mix the crumb with finely shredded beef suet, grated nutmeg, salt, and currants.

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

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

Shape and cook

  1. Shape into flattened turkey egg-sized pieces.

  2. Melt butter in a dish over a clear fire, then add the puddings and cover them.

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

Eggs
Bind the crumbs and suet into a cohesive paste that holds its shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Stale bread crumb
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs the wine and egg mixture.
Fresh butter
Fat for cooking that browns the pudding surface and adds richness.

The step that matters

Knead into a stiff paste and let it rest. If the mixture is too wet it will spread and fall apart when shaped. Resting lets the crumbs absorb the liquid evenly, making the paste firmer and easier to shape.

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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