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Figs, Green, Compote of

A compote of green figs simmered in a syrup of sugar, water, lemon rind, and optional port wine or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and port wine work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Figs, Green, Compote of

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar with water and lemon rind, skimming off the scum.

  2. After 15 minutes, add green figs and simmer slowly until tender.

  3. Remove figs and boil the syrup quickly.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour syrup over figs and let cool.

  2. Serve on a glass dish.

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 + port winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sweetens the figs and helps preserve them.
Green figs
Provide the main fruit, which softens as it simmers in the syrup.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup for cooking the figs.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup quickly after removing the figs. Rapid boiling thickens the syrup by evaporating water and concentrating the sugar, so it coats the figs rather than running thin.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, fig, port wine. 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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