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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, sugar, butter, eggs, and served with a lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix chopped figs and butter together in a bowl.

  2. Add bread crumbs, granulated sugar, and eggs to the fig mixture and combine well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and steam for three hours.

Make the lemon sauce and serve

  1. Mix granulated sugar, corn starch, and lemon juice together for the lemon sauce.

  2. Slowly add boiling water to the mixture while stirring until it thickens.

  3. Add small pieces of lemon rind to the sauce before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fig + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Fig + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main flavour and sweetness, and moisture, to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding body and structure as they absorb moisture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it steams.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon sauce as it heats with the boiling water.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the sauce. Pouring the water in slowly while stirring keeps the cornstarch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, sugar, butter, egg, sauce, corn. 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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