Skip to main content
Dessert

Fig Preserves

Preserves figs by soaking, boiling with sugar, leaves, and lemon or ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fig and grape match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Cut the figs across the top in the form of a cross.

  2. Soak the figs in strong salted water for 3 days, changing the water daily.

  3. Boil the figs in fresh water with grape or fig leaves until they turn green.

  4. Soak the figs in cold water for 3 days, changing the water twice daily.

Make the preserves

  1. Add 1 lb of white sugar for each lb of figs and boil for a short while.

  2. Remove from heat and let sit for 1-2 days.

  3. Add 2 or more lbs of sugar and boil again until done.

  4. While boiling, add sliced lemon or root ginger to taste.

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 + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  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

Figs
Provide the fruit that is softened, sweetened and set into the preserve.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, drawing out water, thickens it into a syrup as it boils.
Coarse sea salt
Used in the salted soaking water that firms the figs before cooking.

The step that matters

Let the figs sit after the first sugar boil. Resting the figs in the sugar syrup lets sugar slowly draw water out of the fruit and into the syrup, so the figs absorb sweetness and keep their shape before the final boil.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, grape. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes