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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A boiled pudding made with figs, suet, bread crumbs, brown sugar, eggs, nutmeg, butter, powdered sugar, lemon rind, and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix chopped figs, suet, bread crumbs, and brown sugar in a bowl.

  2. Bind the mixture with 3 beaten eggs and add grated nutmeg.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 4 hours in a pot of boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together butter and powdered sugar for the sauce.

  2. Add 3 eggs, lemon rind, and juice to the sauce.

  3. Cook the sauce in a double boiler until thick like honey.

Finish

  1. Add salt to both the pudding and the 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main fruit flavour and moist, sweet body to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its soft, bound body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce for a smooth texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce in a double boiler. Eggs thicken gently over indirect heat. Too much heat can scramble them, leaving a grainy sauce instead of a smooth, honey-like consistency.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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