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Dessert

Fig Candy

A syrup of sugar, water, and cream of tartar used to coat or dip 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 Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil without stirring until the mixture reaches an amber color.

  3. Stir in the cream of tartar just before removing from heat.

Prepare and coat the figs

  1. Wash the figs, open them, and lay them in a tin pan.

  2. Pour the candy over the figs or dip the figs in the syrup.

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
Forms the candy itself, and cooking it browns it into a sweet, caramel-flavored coating.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup smooth instead of grainy.
Figs
Supply the fruit inside the candy coating.

The step that matters

Boil to an amber color. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to caramelize, and the window between amber and burnt is narrow. Going past amber makes the candy bitter, so the color should be watched closely while it boils.

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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