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Dessert

Fig, Date and Nut Candy

A sweet candy made from egg white, sugar, flavoring, chocolate coating, nuts, maple sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fig, Date and Nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine egg white and cold water in a bowl without beating the egg.

  2. Stir in confectioners' sugar until the mixture is thick enough to knead like bread dough.

  3. Add desired flavoring and mix well.

  4. If the mixture is not stiff enough, add more sugar.

Coat and finish

  1. Grate chocolate and melt it in a pan over steam for coating.

  2. Drop balls of the cream mixture into the melted chocolate and coat them.

  3. Remove the coated balls with a fork and place them on the bottom of an upside-down tin pan.

  4. Use a sharp, thin knife to remove them easily.

  5. Store in a cool place.

Variations

  1. Mix nuts into the cream mixture for nut candy.

  2. Add grated maple sugar to the cream mixture for maple sugar candy.

  3. Roll some cream balls in cinnamon for extra flavor.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  3. Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg white
Provides the binding structure that holds the sugar-based mixture together.
Confectioners' sugar
Thickens the mixture into a kneadable dough and adds sweetness.
Chocolate
Forms a sweet, firm outer coating around each candy.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, almond, chocolate, cinnamon):

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, almond, chocolate, cinnamon. 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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