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Dessert

Steamed Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, suet, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, cinnamon, and optional jelly scraps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Steamed Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine chopped figs, suet, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, cinnamon, and jelly scraps.

  2. Knead the mixture well with your hands until fully combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and cover it.

  2. Steam the pudding for 6 hours.

  3. Serve with hard 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.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Figs
Provide the main sweetness, moisture and fruity flavor of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding body and absorb moisture as the mixture binds.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the figs and suet.

The step that matters

Kneading until fully combined. Thorough mixing spreads the figs, suet and eggs evenly through the crumbs so the pudding sets with a consistent texture rather than in pockets.

Swap the fig

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

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

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