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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A boiled pudding made with figs, bread, sugar, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the chopped figs with the butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the grated bread, powdered sugar, eggs, and milk, mixing well.

Fill the mold

  1. Butter a mold.

  2. Sprinkle the mold with bread crumbs.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  4. Cover the mold tightly.

Cook

  1. Boil for 3 hours.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Add sweetness, moisture, and a soft, jammy body to the pudding.
Grated bread
Provides bulk and structure, soaking up liquid to hold the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm yet tender pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the bread so the batter blends evenly.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the pudding and dissolves easily into the batter.

The step that matters

Cover the mold tightly. A tight seal traps steam during the long boil, keeping the pudding moist and preventing water from getting into the mixture.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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