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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, cloves, cassia, served with a corn starch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cassia match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 194 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, cloves, cassia, and chopped figs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and steam for 4 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine corn starch and sugar in a saucepan with 1 pint of water.

  2. Boil for 10 minutes, then let cool.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolk and white to the cooled sauce, along with a pinch of salt and vanilla for flavor.

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. Clove + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cassia + figtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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 add richness and moisture to the pudding's crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with cream of tartar to release gas, helping the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda as an acid, producing lift and balancing the sweetness.
Figs
Provide sweetness, moisture and the chewy, dense texture of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist and tender.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and carries the spice flavours.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg to the cooled sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding beaten egg to a hot starch sauce can curdle it. Letting the sauce cool first lowers that risk and keeps it smooth.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, cream, clove, fig. 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 fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

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