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Sauce

Sugared Figs

A sweet treat made by boiling figs in sugar syrup, sun‑drying, and rolling in coarse sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sugared Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine water and sugar in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Carefully add figs and boil slowly for 1 hour.

Dry and finish

  1. Remove figs from the syrup and place them on a platter in the sun.

  2. The next morning, return figs to the syrup, boil for 1 hour, and sun-dry again.

  3. Repeat this process on the third morning and leave figs in the sun until dry.

  4. Roll dried figs in coarse granulated sugar and pack them in a tin box lined with wax paper.

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 + 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

Figs
Provide the main fruit body, which softens in the syrup and dries to a chewy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the figs and, as the syrup concentrates, helps preserve them and form a sticky coating.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that the figs cook and absorb.

The step that matters

Repeated syrup boiling and sun-drying. Each boil draws sugar into the fruit and each drying day removes water, so the figs must dry fully between rounds. Leaving them damp risks spoilage and a soft, fermented result.

“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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