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Dessert

Fig Marmalade

A sweet preserve made from figs, sugar, citrus pulp and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the figs.

  2. Grate the yellow part of the lemons, avoiding the white skin.

Cook

  1. Combine figs, sugar, lemon pulp and juice, and orange pulp and juice in a pot.

  2. Add the bag of spices.

  3. Boil the mixture for about 1 hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Form the bulk of the marmalade and give it body and sweetness as they break down.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the mixture thicken and set as it cooks.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and supports setting.
Oranges
Add citrus flavour and aroma to the fruit base.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture. Sugar-heavy fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot. A long boil thickens them as water evaporates and the sugar and fruit pectin concentrate, so the pot needs close attention to set the marmalade without burning it.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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