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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, milk, sugar, suet, nutmeg, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 510 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine figs and bread crumbs.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the mixture and cover for 20 minutes.

Mix and steam

  1. Stir in brown sugar, suet, nutmeg, flour, and eggs, and beat all ingredients well together.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Steam for 2 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. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the boiling milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Figs
Provide sweetness, moisture and the main flavour of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Flour
Adds a little starch to help thicken and hold the pudding together.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the figs and crumbs and cover. The boiling milk softens the bread crumbs and plumps the figs so the mixture absorbs liquid evenly. Covering traps the steam so the crumbs hydrate fully before the eggs are added.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Lemonfits less well

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

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

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