Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Bar

A sweet confection of figs, sugar, and cream, formed into bars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fig Bar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fig paste

  1. Place sugar or syrup in a pot over heat until it reaches a thread stage.

  2. Add figs, cut them with candy shears or grate them.

  3. Stir until the mixture reaches a large thread consistency.

  4. Set aside on a barrel and sift in powdered sugar.

  5. Work the mixture with a spatula until it forms a thick mass.

  6. Pour onto a sugared slab between iron bars and spread evenly.

Add the cream and set

  1. Dissolve cream in a basin set in another basin of water.

  2. Color the cream pink and flavor it with nectar.

  3. Pour the cream over the fig paste and spread evenly with a palette knife.

  4. Let it sit for a few hours or overnight, then cut into bars or squares.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  3. Fig + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar or crystal syrup
Forms the sweet, firm body of the bars as it cooks to a thread stage.
Figs
Provide the fig flavor and bulk of the paste.
Powdered sugar
Stiffens the mixture so it can be worked into a thick mass.
Plain cream
Forms the soft, rich layer that sits on top of the fig paste.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture reaches a large thread consistency. Sugar syrup must reach the correct thread stage to set firm. Stopping early leaves a soft paste, while overcooking makes it brittle and hard to spread.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes