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Dessert

Fig Jam

A sweet preserve made from figs, sugar, citrus, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Seed the oranges and lemons, then cut them into thin slices.

Make the jam

  1. In a pot, combine the sliced oranges, sliced lemons, and water.

  2. Add the figs and sugar to the pot.

  3. Cook the mixture until it thickens enough to keep in jars.

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. Orange + lemontop 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
Provide the main fruit body, flavour and pectin-bearing pulp for the jam.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jam thicken and keep well.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens flavour and supports gel set.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and sharpness that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Cook until the jam thickens. Jam sets as sugar and pectin concentrate while water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves it runny and unsafe to keep in jars, while overcooking makes it stiff and dull.

Swap the fig

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, 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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