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Fig Tomatoes

Preserved fig tomatoes sweetened with sugar and boiled in syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and tomato share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the fig tomatoes to easily remove their skins.

  2. Weigh the tomatoes and place them in stone crocks in layers with an equal amount of sugar.

  3. Let them stand for two days.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the syrup, boil and skim it until no scum arises.

  2. Pour the syrup over the tomatoes and let them stand for two days.

  3. Boil the syrup and skim again.

  4. After the third time, if the weather is good, they are fit to dry; if not, let them stand in the syrup until pleasant weather.

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 + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

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

  2. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 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

Fig tomatoes
Provide the fruit that is preserved, drying into a chewy, concentrated texture.
Sugar
Draws water out of the tomatoes and forms a syrup that preserves them and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling and skimming the syrup. Sugar syrup must be boiled and skimmed repeatedly so impurities rise as scum and are removed. Each boil concentrates the syrup and draws more water from the fruit, which helps preserve it.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar. 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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