Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fig and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped figs, bread crumbs, chopped suet, sugar, lemon zest, and chopped lemon peel.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

  3. Boil or steam for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sweet 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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  3. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Figs
Provide the main sweetness, moisture and fruity flavour of the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, cake-like body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich, sweet flavours.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 3 hours. Cooking gently over steady, moderate heat for the full time lets the suet melt and the crumbs set into a tender pudding. Boiling hard or letting the water run dry can make the mold crack or the pudding dry.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes