Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, molasses, suet, buttermilk, eggs, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together molasses, suet, and spices.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in 1 teaspoon of hot water and mix with other ingredients.

  3. Beat eggs lightly and stir into the mixture.

  4. Add figs and flour, and beat thoroughly until the consistency is like cake batter.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Steam for ½ hour when ready to use.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Buttermilk or sour milk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda and supplies moisture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its body.

The step that matters

Beating the batter to cake-batter consistency. Thorough beating fully combines the flour and wet ingredients so the batter hydrates evenly, and the batter's consistency determines how well the pudding rises and holds together during steaming.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, buttermilk, egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, buttermilk, egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes