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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, almonds, figs, apples, citrus peel, eggs, milk, bread, sugar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the flour and baking powder.

  2. Chop and add the suet, almonds, figs, grated apples, lemon peel, and orange peel.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, milk, crumbled bread, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

  4. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill a buttered mold with the mixture, cover it, and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with wine or brandy 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Fig + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

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

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, they lighten the dense pudding batter.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the pudding sets.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Figs
Add sweetness and moisture, along with the pudding's main flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that lightens the batter. Folding gently preserves that air, while vigorous stirring would deflate it and leave the pudding dense.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, almond, fig, lemon, orange, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, almond, fig, lemon, orange, egg, 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.

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

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