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Dessert

Stewed Figs

Stewed figs are figs simmered with water, lemon peel, sugar, and sherry, served with custard and whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Soak the figs in water if they are very dry.

  2. In a pot, combine the figs, water, lemon peel, sugar, and sherry.

  3. Stew the mixture slowly for one hour until the figs are soft but not broken.

Serve

  1. Serve the figs in cups with custard and a spoonful of whipped egg white on top.

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 + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 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. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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
The main fruit; gentle stewing softens its flesh while it keeps its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the figs and the cooking liquid.
Sherry
Adds fruity, aromatic depth and a little acidity to the stewing liquid.
Lemon peel
Adds citrus aroma that lightly flavours the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for one hour. Keep the heat low so the figs soften gently without bursting. Rapid boiling breaks down the fruit's skin and flesh, so the figs lose their shape and turn mushy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, sherry, 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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