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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A sweet pudding made with figs, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, marmalade, and milk, boiled for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,026 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Rub the suet into the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the sugar and chopped figs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the marmalade.

  4. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  5. Add enough warm milk to achieve a consistency between a cake mixture and a thick batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-buttered mold or basin.

  2. Boil for four hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Figs
Supply the main fruit flavour and natural sweetness, plus moisture.
Demerara sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the warm milk. The milk should bring the mixture to a consistency between a cake mixture and a thick batter. Too little leaves the pudding dry and crumbly, while too much makes it loose and heavy, because the bread crumbs absorb liquid and the eggs set the structure as it cooks.

Swap the fig

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

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

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