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Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, figs, suet, milk, flour, molasses, spices, and served with a sauce of sugar, butter, eggs, water, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, figs, suet, milk, flour, molasses, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a bowl and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together sugar and butter for the sauce.

  2. Add beaten eggs and hot water and mix well.

  3. Heat the mixture in a double boiler.

  4. Stir in vanilla.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding with the 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the dense pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, depth of flavor and a dark colour.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.
Figs
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Filling and steaming the mold. The batter rises and expands as it cooks, so the greased mold should not be overfilled. Steady, gentle steam cooks the pudding evenly and keeps it moist rather than dry or dense.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, milk, flour, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg):

  1. Figthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Orangefits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, flour, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg. 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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