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Dessert

Frozen Fig Pudding

A frozen dessert made with figs, sugar syrup, custard, cream, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Frozen Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fig syrup

  1. Melt the sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until light brown.

  2. Add the boiling water to the melted sugar and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the syrup over the chopped figs and set aside.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, flour, sugar, and egg yolks to make a custard.

  2. Cook the custard over low heat until thickened, then let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, stir in the cream and vanilla extract.

Freeze and combine

  1. Freeze the custard mixture, and when it's nearly frozen, fold in the figs.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set during cooking.
Flour
Helps thicken the custard so it holds a smooth, stable body.
Figs
Provide fruity flavor and chewy pieces throughout the frozen custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, creamy texture that resists icy crystals.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when melted, builds the caramel-flavored syrup.

The step that matters

Freeze the custard until nearly frozen before folding in the figs. Adding figs too early lets them sink and freeze into hard chunks, while folding in at the nearly frozen stage keeps them evenly distributed and the texture smooth.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Figthe original
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, egg, cream, vanilla. 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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