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Fig Sandwich

A sandwich made with a fig paste spread between thin bread slices, flavored with lemon and topped with nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and bread work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Fig Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fig paste

  1. Chop the figs very fine.

  2. Add hot water to moisten the figs into a paste.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler for two hours.

  4. Flavor the paste with lemon to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the fig paste between thin slices of bread.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped nuts before serving.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Fig + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  4. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main sweet body and thick texture of the filling once cooked into a paste.
Hot water
Moistens the chopped figs so they break down into a spreadable paste.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the figs.
Bread
Holds the fig paste between thin slices as a sandwich base.

The step that matters

Cooking the fig mixture in a double boiler. Cooking gently over indirect heat for a long time lets the figs soften and thicken into a paste without scorching. Too much direct heat can burn the sugars and stick to the pan.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, lemon, bread. 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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