Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, flour, milk, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  1. Crumble stale bread into a basin.

  2. Grease a basin or mold and wet and flour a pudding cloth.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, salt, baking powder, flour, sugar, suet, and figs in the basin with a wooden spoon.

  2. Beat the egg and milk together, then pour over the dry ingredients and mix into a moist paste.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into the greased basin, tie the cloth over the top with string.

  2. Steam or boil the pudding for 4 hours, or 2½ hours if in a cloth.

  3. Once done, remove the string and cloth, and turn the pudding onto a hot dish.

  4. Serve plain or with lemon 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. Fig + breadtop 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. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main fruit flavour and moist, sweet pieces throughout the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding a light, soft body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Egg
Binds the dry ingredients together and helps set the pudding's structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to help the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding must cook for a long, steady time in gently simmering steam or water so the batter sets through without drying out or becoming dense. Keep the water boiling and topped up so the heat stays even.

Swap the fig

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

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

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

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