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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, breadcrumbs, suet, walnuts, and sweet milk, finished with orange peel and hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the breadcrumbs in sweet milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine beaten egg yolks, soaked breadcrumbs, figs, suet, walnuts, flour, and baking powder, stirring constantly.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill a buttered mold three-fourths full with the mixture.

  2. Cover the mold and steam for 3 hours.

  3. Garnish with flowers, lemon slices, and hard sauce flavored with nutmeg before serving.

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 + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the batter, and whipped whites lighten it as they set during steaming.
White breadcrumbs
Soaked in milk, they absorb liquid and give the pudding a moist, tender crumb.
Suet
Its fat melts during steaming, adding richness and a moist texture.
Flour
Provides starch that sets with the eggs to give the pudding its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Figs
Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when stiffly beaten and gently folded, so vigorous stirring deflates them and the pudding turns dense instead of light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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