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Dessert

Date or Fig Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Date or Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, cinnamon, salt, and sugar to the soaked crumbs.

  3. Dredge the fruit in the flour and stir it into the mixture.

  4. Beat all ingredients vigorously before pouring into a well-greased mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Figs or dates
Provide the sweet, chewy fruit body and most of the pudding's flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Powdered suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps build a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Beat all ingredients vigorously before pouring into a well-greased mold. Thorough beating spreads the fruit and crumbs evenly through the batter so the pudding cooks uniformly. Greasing the mold keeps the pudding from sticking when it is unmolded after steaming.

Swap the fig

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

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

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