Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Rub together the flour, suet, salt, and brown sugar.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, chopped figs, baking powder, and nutmeg.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then mix in the milk.

  4. Combine all ingredients well and pour into a buttered basin.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and steam for six hours.

  2. Serve with hard 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. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 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

Dried figs
Provide the main body, sweetness and chewy texture of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Flour
Gives the pudding its structure so it holds together when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and add body, giving a softer, lighter crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter, giving a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Steam for six hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. Keeping the basin covered and the water at a steady simmer maintains moisture and an even set throughout the long cooking time.

Swap the fig

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

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

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

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes