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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A pudding made by boiling water and figs, thickened with corn starch and nuts, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and corn share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the water and chopped figs slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the corn starch and nuts, then let the mixture cool.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

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

  2. Corn + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Fig + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  4. Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide sweetness, fruity flavour, and a soft, thick body as they cook down.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it cools, giving the pudding its set structure.
Nuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft figs.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch and letting the mixture cool. Corn starch thickens when it is heated in liquid and then sets as the mixture cools. Adding it at the right point and allowing a full cool gives the pudding its body. If the starch is added too early or not fully cooled, the texture can stay thin or uneven.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, nuts, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, nuts, cream. 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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