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Dessert

Steamed Fig Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Steamed Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fig mixture

  1. Chop the figs, nuts, and suet together.

  2. Mix the sugar, salt, and spices, then add to the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs with the fig-suet mixture.

Combine and steam

  1. Combine the yolk mixture with the fig mixture, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Steam in a well-buttered mold for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with hard or liquid 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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Fig + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main body, sweetness and chewy texture of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist during long steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and egg, giving the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped, they lighten the batter and help it rise during steaming.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it into a set, custard-like crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring them in hard deflates the batter, leaving a denser pudding after steaming.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, nuts, bread, milk, sugar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, nuts, bread, milk, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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