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Dessert

Dried Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dried figs, bread crumbs, sugar, suet, eggs, milk, baking powder, nutmeg, and brandy.

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 ↓

Dried Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil in a pot for 4 hours, ensuring the mold is not directly in the water.

  2. Alternatively, place the mixture in a cake pan with a tube in the center. Cover the pan with a cloth.

  3. Steam over a kettle of water for 4 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. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fig + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Fig + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 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

Dried figs
Provide sweetness, moisture and the main fruity body of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its soft, cake-like structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set it into a firm but tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet and figs.

The step that matters

Keeping the mold out of direct water. When the mold sits in direct contact with boiling water, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn waterlogged at the edges. Keeping the mold raised lets gentle steam heat it evenly, so the pudding cooks through and keeps a light, moist texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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