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Dessert

Fig Dressing for Cake

A sweet fig dressing made with figs, raisins, almonds, powdered sugar, water, and egg white, used as icing for cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fig Dressing for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut figs and place them in a pan.

  2. Pour 2-3 tablespoons of boiling water over them, cover, and let them heat through.

  3. Chop the figs, raisins, and almonds finely.

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, combine powdered sugar with enough water to create a thick syrup.

  2. Boil until thick.

  3. Slowly add the beaten egg white to the syrup, stirring continuously.

Bind and coat

  1. Pour half of the icing over the chopped fruit to bind it together.

  2. Use the remaining icing to coat the cake.

  3. Cover the entire cake with icing if desired.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  3. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

Figs
Provide the main fruit body and sweetness that binds the filling together.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the chopped fruit mixture.
Egg white
Whipped into the syrup to give the icing a thick, airy, set-like body.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into water to form a thick syrup that becomes the icing base.

The step that matters

Slowly add the beaten egg white to the syrup, stirring continuously.. Adding egg white to hot syrup slowly while stirring keeps it from scrambling into lumps and lets it blend into a smooth, glossy icing.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figthe original
  3. Datesfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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