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Dessert

Stuffed Figs

A dessert of figs filled with walnuts, sweetened with sugar and lemon, flavored with sherry, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Stuffed Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Wash the figs and make an opening on the side of each fig.

  2. Press in a teaspoonful of chopped walnut meats and fasten with a toothpick.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the figs with boiling water and cook until tender, about 10 minutes before adding other ingredients.

  2. Add ½ cup of sugar and the juice of ½ lemon, then flavor with sherry wine.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Fig + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Soften when simmered and form the main body of the dessert.
English walnut meats
Add a crunchy, slightly bitter nutty contrast to the soft figs.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the syrup thicken as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the figs and syrup.
Sherry wine
Adds a fragrant, fruity aroma and depth of flavor.
Whipped cream
Adds cool, rich fat that balances the sweet, tart figs.

The step that matters

Cook the figs until tender before adding the sugar and lemon. Figs must soften fully in the hot water first, since sugar added too early can toughen the skins and slow softening. Adding the sugar and acid afterward lets the figs keep their shape while the syrup develops.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, walnut, meat, sugar, sherry, wine, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, walnut, meat, sugar, sherry, wine, 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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