Skip to main content
Dessert

Stuffed Figs

Dessert of figs filled with a sweet nut mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mixed nuts and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nut filling

  1. Chop the mixed nuts very fine.

  2. Beat the egg white until partly light, then gradually beat in the powdered sugar until stiff.

  3. Stir in the chopped nuts and vanilla or orange rind until thoroughly mixed.

Stuff the figs

  1. Carefully split the figs on one side and scrape out some of the inside flesh.

  2. Mix the scraped flesh with the nut mixture, then stuff the figs until they are full.

  3. Press the skin together to hide the split.

Serve

  1. Arrange the stuffed figs on a doily in a glass dish and serve as bon-bons.

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. Mixed nuts + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Fig + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  3. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  5. Mixed nuts + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pulled figs
Form the soft, sweet shell that holds the nut filling.
Egg white
Whipped to a stiff foam that gives the filling light structure and body.
Mixed nuts
Provide the main texture and rich flavor of the filling.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg white and sweetens the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white until stiff. Egg white must be whipped to partly light before the sugar is added gradually; under-beaten or over-beaten whites will not hold the filling's shape and structure well.

Swap the mixed nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, egg, almond, pecans, walnut, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Mixed nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, egg, almond, pecans, walnut, sugar, vanilla. 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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes