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Dessert

Fig Pudding with Orange Sauce

A baked pudding made with figs, flour, milk, and orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Pudding with Orange Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped figs, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, combine the milk, vanilla, orange juice, and zest.

Make and bake the batter

  1. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  3. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with orange 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. Fig + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and turns light.
Figs
Add moisture, chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown at the edges as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps bind the batter together.

The step that matters

Stir the wet and dry ingredients only until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the pudding tough and dense rather than tender. Stopping once the streaks disappear keeps the crumb soft.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, flour, milk, sugar, vanilla. 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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