Skip to main content
Dessert

Oxford Puddings

A fried biscuit and currant pudding made with suet, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Biscuit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,009 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Oxford Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated biscuit, currants, chopped suet, and sugar together.

  2. Add the yolks of the eggs and mix until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry the balls in fresh butter until they are a light golden color.

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. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated biscuit
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs moisture to hold the mixture together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls rich and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to the balls.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the balls.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown lightly in the butter.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in butter. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside while the inside heats through. Too high a heat scorches the butter and surface before the center is warm, so keep the color light and golden.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, egg, 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.

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipes