Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, breadcrumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and citrus peel.

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

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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. Chop the figs and mix them with breadcrumbs, melted butter, sugar, eggs, grated nutmeg, and the peels, then combine all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 3 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 flavour and moist, chunky body of the pudding.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the butter and fruit juices to give the pudding its soft, set structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the crumb tender and moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and crumbs through without drying the pudding. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, orange, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Blackberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, orange, lemon. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes