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Dessert

Frozen Fig and Date Pudding

A chilled pudding made from stewed figs, dates, cream, sugar, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and dates work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Frozen Fig and Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Stew figs until tender.

  2. Run the figs through a sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. Add lemon juice, sugar, nutmeg, and cream to the figs.

  2. Seed the dates and cut them in halves, then add them to the mixture.

  3. Freeze until stiff and serve with stiff, unsweetened whipped cream or plain.

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 + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the frozen mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and softens the texture of the frozen mixture.
Stewed figs
Provide the main fruit flavour and bulk of the pudding.
Dates
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the figs.

The step that matters

Freeze until stiff. Freezing must be stopped at a firm but scoopable stage; freezing too long makes the pudding hard and icy, while too little leaves it soft and loose.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, nutmeg, cream, sugar, dates. 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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