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Dessert

Fig Cups

A dessert of figs stuffed with salted almonds, simmered in wine, lemon juice, and sugar, served with ladyfingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 519 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Cups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stuff figs with chopped salted almonds.

Cook

  1. In a chafing dish, combine sugar, lemon juice, and wine; heat until hot.

  2. Add the stuffed figs to the chafing dish.

  3. Cover and cook until the figs are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with lady fingers.

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 + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a firm, crunchy contrast to the soft fruit.
Figs
Provide the main body, sweetness and soft, tender texture of the dish.
Wine
Adds liquid for gentle simmering and a fruity, acidic aroma to the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the cooking liquid and helps form a syrup with the figs.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, wine, 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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