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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A baked pudding made with figs, beef suet, eggs, butter, baking powder, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the figs, beef suet, eggs, butter, baking powder, and milk.

  2. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 sweetness, moisture, and a jammy fruit flavor throughout the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter and lightens the pudding.
Flour
Builds the starch structure that holds the stiff batter together as it cooks.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter. Adding flour slowly lets you stop at the right consistency. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and dry, while too little leaves it loose and unable to hold its shape in the mold.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, butter, milk, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, butter, milk, flour. 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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