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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet or butter, bread crumbs, figs, sugar, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine suet or butter, bread crumbs, chopped figs, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and ground mace.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Coffee + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together895 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while separately beaten whites lighten its texture.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Figs
Supply the main flavor and sweetness, along with moisture.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a soft, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding gently keeps the whites' trapped air intact, so the pudding stays light rather than dense. Stirring them in hard knocks out the air and makes the texture heavy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, fig, coffee, sugar, cinnamon, egg. 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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