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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, breadcrumbs, flour, suet, molasses, baking soda, sour milk, eggs, and salt, topped with a brown sugar and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine figs, bread crumbs, flour, suet, molasses, baking soda, sour milk, beaten eggs, and salt.

  2. Steam the mixture for 2½ hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together brown sugar, cornstarch, butter, and egg yolks.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the creamed mixture.

  3. Place the sauce mixture over a kettle of boiling water and stir in boiling water while cooking.

  4. Flavor the sauce with lemon.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main fruit flavour and moist, chewy body throughout the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during steaming to give the pudding structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lighten the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the creamed mixture.. Stiff whites trap air that lightens the sauce; overmixing or deflating them loses that lift, leaving a dense sauce.

Swap the fig

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

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

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