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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, suet, bread crumbs, sugars, eggs, flour, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped figs, suet, moistened bread crumbs, brown sugar, white sugar, beaten eggs, baking powder, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt until well combined.

  2. Tie the mixture in a damp, floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for 3.5 hours.

  2. Serve with your choice of 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried figs
Provide the main body, sweetness and fruity flavour of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk to give the pudding a soft, moist structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the pudding's texture.

Swap the fig

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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