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Fig Salad

A fruit salad of figs, date, prunes, St. John's bread, persimmon juice, served with tapioca and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and persimmon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fig Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the figs, date, and sweet prunes.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped fruits with the finely-ground St. John's bread.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the juice of the persimmons and mix well.

  2. Serve with flaked tapioca and cooked rice.

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 + persimmontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Fig + ricetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Fig + datetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Provide the main fruit body and natural sweetness of the salad.
St. john's bread
Adds thickness and body by absorbing moisture from the chopped fruit.
Persimmons
Contribute juice that moistens the fruit and adds fresh, sweet flavour.

Swap the date

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Datethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, bread, persimmon, rice. 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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