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Dessert

Fig Jam

A sweet preserve made from ripe figs, lemons, and sugar, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the figs.

  2. Slice and quarter the lemons, removing all seeds.

  3. Pour boiling water over the lemons and cook until tender.

  4. Discard the water and add the lemons to the figs.

Cook the jam

  1. Add the sugar and boil the mixture slowly for 4 hours, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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
Provide the bulk of the jam and its fruity flavor and body as they break down.
Sweet rinded lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet figs.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it thickens, helps it set and preserves it.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and stir frequently. Sugar-rich fruit scorches easily on the bottom of the pot over a long simmer. Frequent stirring keeps it from sticking and burning, which would give a bitter, off flavor.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar. 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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