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Dessert

Fig Gum Drops

A sweet confection made from figs, gelatin, sugar, glucose, starch, and flavored oils, formed into drops and coated in sugar sand.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Gum Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fig pulp and gelatine

  1. Boil figs in water for 30 minutes, then grind to a pulp.

  2. Soak gelatin in water for 15 hours, ensuring it is fully covered.

Make the gum base

  1. In a steam kettle, combine soaked gelatin, sugar, water, and glucose.

  2. Soak starch in water and stir until dissolved, then add to the mixture.

  3. Cook until a drop on a pan slightly jellies.

Set and finish

  1. Pour into starch molds and let sit in a dry room for 24 hours.

  2. Remove from molds and let stand for 10-12 hours.

  3. Coat in sugar sand and pack in boxes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 fruit flavour and body of the gum drops.
Japanese gelatine
Forms the elastic gel that gives the drops their chewy structure.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps the mixture set firm and hold its shape.
Glucose
Prevents sugar from crystallising, keeping the drops soft and smooth.
Starch
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the drops a firm, non-sticky set.

The step that matters

Cook until a drop on a pan slightly jellies. Cooking to the right point concentrates the sugar and sets the gelatine gel. Undercooked mixture stays too soft to hold shape, while overcooking makes the drops hard and brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, 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.

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