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Peanut and Fig Sandwiches

A sandwich made with a fig and peanut paste spread on buttered bread, topped with peanuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peanut and Fig Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fig paste

  1. In a double boiler, cook chopped figs with water until a paste forms.

  2. Stir in lemon juice.

Assemble the sandwich

  1. Spread the fig paste on buttered slices of white bread.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and top with another slice of bread.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Fig + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Fig + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,042 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Break down into a thick paste that gives the sandwich its sweetness and body.
Peanuts
Add crunch and a roasted, nutty flavor against the soft fig paste.
White bread
Provides the soft structure that holds the fig paste and peanuts together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the bread, moistening it against the fig paste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, butter, peanut. 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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