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Dessert

College Puddings

A sweet, suet‑based pudding with eggs, flour, currants, and optional brandy or citrus, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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College Puddings

Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

College Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 °F (175 °C) if baking.

  2. Beat the eggs together in a quart basin until smooth.

  3. Add the flour, nutmeg, ginger, and sugar; mix until smooth.

  4. Stir in the chopped suet and currants until well combined.

  5. If desired, add brandy or white wine and minced orange or citron.

Cook and serve

  1. For baking, pour the mixture into patty pans and bake for 20 minutes.

  2. For frying, heat butter or lard in a pan, shape the mixture into patties, and fry until light brown.

  3. If frying, roll the patties in a little flour before frying.

  4. Serve with white‑wine 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and give it structure as they set when cooked.
Flour
Adds body to the batter so the patties hold their shape.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown during cooking.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Frying the patties until light brown. Medium heat in butter or lard browns the outside gradually, while the inside sets. Too much heat scorches the surface before the centre is cooked through.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, 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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