Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, brown sugar, suet, candied lemon peel, citron, nutmeg, and eggs.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped figs, bread crumbs, brown sugar, suet, candied lemon peel, citron, and grated nutmeg thoroughly.

  2. Add the eggs and mix until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a mold.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam the pudding for 4 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main sweet fruit flavour and moist, chewy body throughout the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, cake-like structure as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Boil or steam the pudding for 4 hours. Long, gentle moist heat is needed to cook the eggs and starch through evenly and set the pudding. Water must keep simmering steadily, since letting it boil dry or cook too fast can leave the pudding uneven or dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, sugar, nutmeg, 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.

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes