Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Fig Cream

A chilled chocolate and fig dessert made with milk, cream, chocolate, sugar, egg white, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 324 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chocolate Fig Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add melted chocolate, sugar, and cinnamon to the milk and cook until well mixed.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool.

Add the cream and egg white

  1. Once cool, fold in the beaten egg white and whipped cream mixed with powdered sugar.

  2. Flavor with vanilla and pour into a 2-quart ice cream freezer.

Freeze with figs

  1. Freeze slightly, then add figs and continue freezing until smooth.

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. Vanilla + figtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together324 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Cinnamon + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  4. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate and sugar dissolve into.
Egg white
Beaten into the base to add lightness and a smoother, airier texture.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavor and richness of the ice cream.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving a smoother, creamier mouthfeel.
Figs
Add fruity sweetness and chewy bits to the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Adding the figs after a partial freeze. Adding figs too early lets them freeze into hard, icy pieces, while adding them when the mixture is only slightly firm lets them distribute evenly and stay tender.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, chocolate, cream, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla):

  1. Figthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, chocolate, cream, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla. 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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes