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Dessert

Figs and Orange Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with figs, orange juice, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Figs and Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Cover sliced figs with water and cook slowly until tender.

  2. Strain the figs and measure 1 cup of the juice into a saucepan.

Make the jelly

  1. Add sugar and gelatine dissolved in cold water to the juice.

  2. Stir in lemon juice and orange juice.

  3. When the mixture thickens, add the figs.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the citrus juices.
Figs
Provide flavour, body and pieces of fruit suspended in the jelly.
Orange juice
Adds liquid, citrus aroma and a bright, mildly acidic flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and lifts the sweetness.

The step that matters

When the mixture thickens, add the figs. Gelatine must be partly set but not fully firm, or the figs will sink to the bottom instead of staying evenly distributed through the jelly.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, 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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