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Dessert

Barley Fig Pudding

A steamed barley pudding with figs, sugar, sweet cream, and milk baked until the milk is nearly absorbed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 48 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the steamed barley, chopped figs, sugar, sweet cream, and fresh milk thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into an earthen pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Place the dish in a pan half full of hot water.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until the milk is nearly absorbed, stirring once or twice during baking to distribute the figs evenly.

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. Barley + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearled barley
Forms the bulk and chewy, starchy body of the pudding as it absorbs liquid.
Figs
Add sweetness, fruity flavour, and soft pieces throughout the pudding.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, creamier texture.
Fresh milk
Provides the liquid that the barley absorbs while baking, setting the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Bake until the milk is nearly absorbed. Baking in a water bath at a gentle oven heat lets the barley slowly absorb the milk without scorching or drying out. Stirring once or twice keeps the figs from sinking, so they stay evenly distributed through the pudding.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar, cream, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, cream, 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.

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