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Dessert

Fig Bock

A simple fig dessert made by boiling sugar and water into amber syrup, then coating figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fig Bock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until it turns amber, without stirring.

  2. Add cream of tartar just before removing from heat.

Assemble and set

  1. Wash figs, split them in half, and lay them flat on a dish.

  2. Pour the syrup over the figs and let it stand until cold.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + figtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Caramelises into the amber syrup that coats and sweetens the figs.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar syrup from crystallising.
Figs
Provide the main fruit flavour and body of the dessert.

The step that matters

Stop the sugar at amber without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger crystallisation, leaving it grainy. Sugar darkens quickly once it nears amber, so removing it at the right colour keeps the flavour clean rather than bitter.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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