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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, figs, sugar, suet, eggs, nutmeg, and milk.

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. In a large bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, chopped figs, moist sugar, chopped suet, eggs, nutmeg, and milk until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce or fry in slices the next day, dusted with powdered sugar.

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. Bread + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Figs
Add sweetness, fruity flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a rich, caramel-like flavor while keeping the pudding moist.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 4 hours. The pudding must be sealed in its mold and kept at a steady simmer for the full time. Water that boils dry or a loose mold lets the pudding dry out or become heavy and uneven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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