Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding.— No. I.

A sweet pudding made with figs, breadcrumbs, suet, brown sugar, eggs, flour, nutmeg, and milk.

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.— No. I.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet and figs very fine.

Mix and cook

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, breadcrumbs, sugar, nutmeg, and the beaten eggs.

  2. Add enough milk to mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold or basin.

  4. Boil for four hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without wine sauce, as preferred.

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. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Breadcrumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding a light, tender body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Figs
Provide sweetness, fruity flavor, and moisture throughout the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the pudding's flavor.

The step that matters

Boil for four hours. A long, steady boil cooks the eggs and starches through and melts the suet evenly. Letting the water drop too low or boil dry can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the center.

Swap the fig

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

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

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

More fig pudding recipes

Steamed 14Sauce 7English 3 See all 340 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes