Skip to main content
Dessert

College Puddings

A biscuit and currant pudding fried in butter, served with white‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
College Puddings

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 ↓

College Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix grated biscuit, currants, suet, sugar, and nutmeg together.

  2. Take the yolks of 3 eggs and mix them into the mixture to form balls.

Fry and serve

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

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

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Grated biscuit
Forms the bulk of the balls and absorbs moisture from the other ingredients.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls rich and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when shaped into balls.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture scattered through the balls.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in butter. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the inside warms through. Too much heat scorches the surface before the centre is heated, so watch for a light golden colour rather than dark brown.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, nutmeg, egg, butter, wine, sauce. 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.

More college pudding recipes

New 6 See all 39 →

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