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Dessert

Figs and Orange Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with figs, orange juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Figs and Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. In a pot, cover sliced figs with water and cook slowly until tender.

  2. Strain the figs and place the juice in a saucepan.

Make the jelly

  1. Add sugar and gelatin dissolved in cold water, along with lemon and orange juices.

  2. Stir until the mixture thickens, then add the figs.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 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. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  5. 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, tender jelly.
Figs
Adds fruit flavour and soft pieces to the set jelly.
Orange juice
Adds citrus flavour and liquid to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, lemon. 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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