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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with figs, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, milk, eggs, salt, and nutmeg.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the figs finely and mix with the dry ingredients.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the milk, then pour into the mixture and stir well.

  3. Turn the mixture into a greased basin and steam for 24 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Dried figs
Provide the main sweetness, fruit flavour and chewy texture through the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Flour
Gives the pudding its structure once the starches set with heat.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the milk and help give the pudding a light, soft body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm but tender pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the suet and figs.

The step that matters

Steaming for 24 hours. Steaming heats the pudding gently and evenly, so the suet melts and the eggs and starch set without drying or scorching. Long, gentle steam gives a moist, uniform texture throughout.

Swap the fig

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

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

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