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Dessert

Fig Preserves

A preserve made by boiling figs in sugar syrup and sealing in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Gather ripe figs that are not cracked.

  2. Dip figs in hot lye for a moment or soak them in lime water for 1 hour, then drain.

Make the preserves

  1. In a pot, combine 2 pounds of sugar with 2 pounds of figs to make syrup.

  2. Boil the figs in the syrup until well cooked.

  3. Remove the figs and boil the syrup down until it just covers the fruit.

  4. Return the figs to the syrup and let it boil.

  5. Seal the mixture in glass or porcelain jars while hot.

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 + limetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the fruit that becomes the bulk of the preserves and carries the flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and, as it thickens into syrup, helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup down until it just covers the fruit. Reducing the syrup concentrates the sugar, which thickens the preserves and helps keep them stable in storage. Boiling too briefly leaves the syrup thin and the preserves more likely to spoil, while over-reducing makes them stiff and candied.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar. 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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