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Figs, Stewed

A stew of turkey figs cooked slowly with sugar, water, port wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In an enamelled saucepan, dissolve the sugar in cold water.

  2. Add your choice of flavoring: orange, lemon, or almond.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the figs and cook on very low heat until they swell, about 2.5 hours.

  2. Once tender, stir in the port wine and lemon juice.

  3. Serve hot with a border of rice or cold 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. Fig + lemontop 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. Turkey + port winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  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

Turkey figs
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they cook slowly in syrup.
Fine sugar
Dissolves into the water to make a syrup that sweetens the figs and helps keep them moist.
Port wine
Adds depth and a rich aroma, added at the end so its flavor stays fresh.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sweet syrup with acidity, balancing the sugar.

The step that matters

Cooking the figs on very low heat. Gentle, slow heat lets the figs swell and soften evenly without breaking apart or the syrup boiling down too fast. Too much heat can split the fruit and turn the syrup thick and scorched.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, turkey, fig, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, turkey, 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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