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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A pudding made with suet, figs, bread crumbs, brown sugar, egg, nutmeg, and milk, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 510 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Combine suet, figs, bread crumbs, brown sugar, beaten egg, nutmeg, and milk in a bowl, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and cover it with a thick bag.

Cook

  1. Boil in water for 4 hours.

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. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fig + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and absorb liquid to give the pudding a soft, set structure.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Figs
Contribute fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in water for 4 hours. The pudding must stay submerged and boil gently for the full time so heat penetrates evenly and the egg and crumbs set into a firm, cooked texture. Water that drops too low or boils too hard can leave the pudding uneven or cause the bag to split.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, bread, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, sugar, egg, milk. 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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