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Dessert

Fig Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, figs, suet, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, suet, and sugar to the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Dredge the chopped figs in flour and stir them into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold with a tight-fitting cover.

  2. Steam for 3 hours and serve with wine 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  3. Nutmeg + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk to form a soft, tender body for the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Figs
Provide chewy pieces and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The mold must be tightly covered so steam cannot escape, keeping the moisture in. Steaming gently over a long period lets the eggs and crumbs set evenly without drying out or becoming watery.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figthe original
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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

More fig pudding recipes

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