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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Mix the batter

  1. Combine figs, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and flour in a mixing bowl, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam for 3 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

Figs
Add sweetness, moisture, and a soft, jammy body to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients and set as they heat, holding the pudding together.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape after cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 3 hours. Long, gentle heat cooks the eggs and flour through evenly while softening the suet. Boiling too hard or letting the water run low can leave the outside overcooked or the centre underdone.

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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