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Dessert

New College Puddings

A sweet biscuit and suet pudding with currants, candied peel, and brandy, fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

New College Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the crumbled Naples biscuits, bread crumbs, chopped suet, currants, candied peel, grated sugar, nutmeg or mace, and brand or ratafia.

  2. Mix in the egg yolks to form a stiff paste.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls, each about 1 ounce.

  2. Fry the balls in butter or lard until they are a fine pale brown.

Serve

  1. Dust with sifted sugar before serving with 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.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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

Naples biscuits
Provide the main body of the mixture, soaking up moisture and giving a crumbly base.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb liquid, helping the mixture hold together as a paste.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the balls moist and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the dry ingredients into a stiff paste and add richness.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy texture, with natural sweetness throughout the balls.

The step that matters

Frying until a fine pale brown. Frying in fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and colour. Heat that is too high will darken or scorch the outside before the centre is heated through.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, bread, beef, sugar, nutmeg, 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.

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