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Dessert

Fig Marmalade

A preserve made by boiling figs with sugar, orange rind, orange pulp, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fig Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges, discard the white part, and chop the center.

  2. Mix the chopped orange center with the figs.

  3. Slice the lemons and boil them in water until tender.

Cook

  1. Combine all ingredients and boil until thick, adding the lemons near the end to prevent hardening the sugar.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  3. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Figs
Provide the main bulk, body and natural sweetness of the marmalade.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture thickens, helps it set and preserves it.
Lemons
Add acidity and pectin, which help the marmalade thicken and set.
Oranges
Contribute aromatic citrus oil from the rind and a bright, tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the lemons near the end. As the mixture boils, water evaporates and the sugar concentrates, so the mixture thickens and can harden. Adding the lemons late keeps them from being overcooked and helps prevent the sugar from hardening.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon. 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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