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Dessert

Fig Pie

A baked pie filled with a smooth fig mixture topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Combine chopped figs, cold water, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture until soft and smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Stir in the egg yolk.

  5. Pour the fig mixture into the pie crust.

  6. Bake the pie until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg white until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add sugar and vanilla, continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Brown the meringue in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 body, sweetness and fruity flavour of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fig flavour.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the filling as it sets during baking.
Egg white
Whipped into foam, it forms the structure of the meringue.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk after the filling cools. Adding the yolk to a hot mixture can scramble it and leave specks in the filling. Letting the cooked figs cool first lets the yolk blend smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, egg, 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.

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