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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, figs, bread crumbs, sugar, egg, nutmeg, baking soda, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a tin mold well.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, chopped figs, bread crumbs, sugar, egg, grated nutmeg, baking soda, and flour.

  2. Add enough water to moisten the mixture.

  3. Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for three 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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Helps the pudding rise and gives it a lighter texture.
Flour
Adds body and helps set the pudding's structure.
Figs
Provide the main fruit sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for three hours. The cloth must be tight enough to hold the batter together but loose enough to allow for expansion as the pudding rises. Keep the water boiling steadily so the pudding cooks through evenly over the full three hours.

Swap the fig

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

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

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