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Dessert

New College Puddings

A sweet bread pudding made with suet, currants, citrus, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, butter, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

New College Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grate the loaf of bread.

  2. Mix the grated bread with suet, currants, citron, orange, sugar, nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

  3. Shape the mixture into goose‑egg sized balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Gently stew the balls in the hot butter, turning them two or three times until golden brown.

  3. Mix the brandy into the batter before serving with pudding sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the other ingredients as it is grated and mixed.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Fries the outside of the balls, giving them a golden brown colour and savoury richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown when cooked.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gently stew the balls in the hot butter. Turning them only two or three times lets a golden crust form on each side without breaking the balls apart. Too much handling or heat can crumble the soft mixture or scorch the butter before the centre is cooked.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, currant, sugar, nutmeg, egg, brandy, 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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