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Dessert

Fig Sauce

A sweet sauce made from stewed figs, sugar, and wine, optionally flavored with lemon, almonds, or orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fig Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the figs slowly until soft, about 2 hours.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in the wine and lemon juice if desired.

  4. Season with bitter almonds or orange peel if you like.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Break down into soft pulp that forms the body of the sauce.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the figs and wine.
Port or other wine
Adds depth and acidity, along with a mellow fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Stew the figs slowly until soft. Low, gentle heat softens the fig flesh evenly without scorching the sugars or letting the sauce catch on the pan bottom. Rushing with high heat can leave lumps of firm fruit and a burnt taste.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, sugar, wine, almond, orange):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar, wine, almond, orange. 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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