Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A boiled pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, eggs, suet, milk, sugar, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fig and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,026 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. In a bowl, stir together the beaten eggs, sugar, suet, salt, and minced figs.

  3. Add the soaked bread crumbs and mix well.

  4. Beat the mixture hard for three minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and boil for two and a half hours.

  2. Serve hot with wine 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 + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding set firm when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and soak up the milk for a tender crumb.
Figs
Add sweetness, moisture, and the main flavour of the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds fat, which makes the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and moistens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter and give a softer texture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture hard for three minutes. Vigorous beating works air and gluten-free starch structure into the batter, helping the pudding hold together and cook evenly rather than turning dense or crumbly.

Swap the fig

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

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

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

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes