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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, suet, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, milk, and butter, topped with a butter‑sugar‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Chop the figs and suet finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the figs, suet, and bread crumbs.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, salt, and milk together.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the fig mixture until well combined.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and steam for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter and slowly add the sugar, mixing well.

  2. Flavor the sauce with vanilla and stir in the cream until smooth.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main fruity sweetness and moist, chewy body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during long steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it steams.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat for a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steaming for the full three hours cooks the egg and crumb mixture through gently, setting it without drying it out. Stopping early leaves the centre wet and loosely set.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sugar, milk, butter, sauce, cream. 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

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