Name: To Preserve Green Figs
Ingredients: green figs; sugar

Why it works: Fig and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,241 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Preserve Green Figs

Ingredients

green figs
sugar

Directions

Prepare the figs

Gather figs when they begin to turn ripe.
Place figs in a sieve and pour boiling water over them. Let them stand for about 1 hour.
Weigh the sugar and use an equal amount (1 pound of sugar for every pound of figs).

Cook and dry

In a kettle, combine figs and sugar to boil with the syrup.
Remove figs and place them in dishes in the sun.
Boil the syrup down, then return the figs to the kettle and let them boil for a short time.

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.

Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green figs: Provide the fruit that is cooked and preserved, supplying the main body and flavour of the dish.
Sugar: Sweetens the figs and, as it concentrates in the syrup, helps preserve them.

“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.