Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, figs, suet, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

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

Why it works: Fig and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 510 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.

  2. Press the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Tie a floured cloth over the mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 3 hours.

  2. Turn out of the mold and serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provides the bulk and soft body that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Melts during the long boil, adding fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Chopped figs
Add sweetness, chewy texture and fruity flavour.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and gives it structure as it cooks.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses flavour deepens the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. A long, steady boil lets the suet melt evenly and the eggs and crumbs set into a cohesive pudding. A fierce or short boil can leave the centre dense or unevenly cooked.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, flour, egg, milk, nutmeg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, flour, egg, milk, nutmeg. 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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes