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Dessert

Frozen Cheese with Figs

A chilled cheese mixture sweetened with figs, served in thick slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and fig work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Frozen Cheese with Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the cheeses and beat them with the heavy cream until smooth.

  2. Flavor and sweeten to taste.

Freeze and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a covered container and bury it in ice and salt for 4 hours.

  2. Slice into 2-inch thick pieces and cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter.

  3. Insert a preserved fig or other fruit into the side of each piece.

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. Cheese + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

  3. Cream + figtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheeses
Provide the main body and rich, creamy flavor of the frozen dessert.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving a smooth, soft texture after freezing.
Preserved figs
Add sweetness and a chewy, fruity contrast to the creamy base.

The step that matters

Burying the container in ice and salt. Salt lowers the melting point of the ice, so the bath gets colder than ice alone. The mixture must freeze slowly and evenly; otherwise it turns icy or grainy and hard to slice cleanly.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, 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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