Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding Sauce

A sauce made from simmered figs, sugar, cornstarch, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fig and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Pudding Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fig base

  1. Cut figs into bits and simmer in enough water to cover until very soft.

  2. Rub through a fine sieve and add enough water to make 1 pint total.

Cook the sauce

  1. Stir in 1 cup sugar and 3 teaspoons cornstarch, then boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon cornstarch and boil for another 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, stir in 1 teaspoon butter and 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and serve as soon as the butter is melted.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  2. Fig + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 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
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the sauce once softened and sieved.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce its body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it a smooth, glossy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred in off the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the figs and sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the second cornstarch portion and boiling. Cornstarch thickens only when it boils and its granules swell. Boiling the sauce for the full time after each addition ensures the starch cooks fully, so the sauce thickens evenly and does not taste raw or pasty.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, butter. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes