Why it works: Fig and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
Fig Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Pass the figs through a colander.
Add half as much sugar as the weight of the figs.
Boil the mixture again.
Add lemon or pineapple for flavoring.
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.
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Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together763 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,241 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Pearfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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