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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A pudding made with dried figs, grated bread, sugar, suet, milk, nutmeg, and egg, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the grated bread and chopped suet in a bowl.

  2. Add the chopped figs, sugar, nutmeg, beaten egg, and milk to the mixture. Stir until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold or pudding bag.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with sugar and butter 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. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fig + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 sweetness, chewy texture and fruity flavour of the pudding.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up moisture from the milk and egg.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape when cooked.
Milk
Moistens the bread and sugar so the mixture blends into a soft batter.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the dense mixture through and turns the suet and bread into a tender, set pudding. The mold or bag must stay submerged and the water kept at a steady simmer so the pudding does not turn soggy or dry.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, sugar, beef, milk, egg. 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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