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Dessert

Fig Preserves Again

A sweet preserve made by boiling figs in a sugar syrup until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,241 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Preserves Again

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Pick figs when they are swelled but not fully ripe.

  2. Cut out the eye of each fig and optionally remove the stems.

  3. Soak the figs in cold water.

Make the preserves

  1. In a pot, combine 1 pound of sugar with ½ cup of water and boil for about 10 minutes to create a syrup.

  2. Drain the figs and add them to the syrup.

  3. Boil the figs in the syrup until they become clear.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the fruit, which softens and turns translucent as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, with water, forms the syrup that preserves the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the figs in the syrup until they become clear. Stop too early and the figs stay firm and opaque; boil too long and they break down. Sugar syrup slowly replaces the water in the fig tissue, which is what makes the fruit clear and holds its shape.

“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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