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Drink

French Dried Fruit Water

A beverage made by boiling water with dried figs, apple slices, lemon peel, and optional bitter almond.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 519 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

French Dried Fruit Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Boil 3 pints of water.

  2. Add a handful of sliced dry figs.

  3. Add 3 apple slices and a small amount of lemon peel or a bitter almond.

  4. Simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the liquid.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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

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

  2. Fig + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry figs
Add sweetness and a deep fruity flavour to the water.
Apples
Release mild sweetness and fruit flavour as they soften during simmering.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils and a bright note to the liquid.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, apple, lemon. 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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