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Stewed Figs

A sweet stew of Turkey figs simmered with sugar, lemon rind, water, port wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and port wine work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Figs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, lemon rind, and cold water in an enamelled or copper stewpan.

  2. Dissolve the sugar over moderate heat.

Stew the figs

  1. Add the figs and gently stew for 2 to 2.5 hours until tender.

  2. Stir in port wine and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Arrange figs in a glass dish and serve cold.

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 + port winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  4. Turkey + port winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  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
Their soft flesh becomes tender and sweet as they stew in the syrup.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the figs hold their shape and gloss.
Port wine
Adds depth, fruitiness and a warm aroma to the syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and figs.

The step that matters

Stew gently until tender. Gentle heat lets the figs soften through without breaking apart or toughening the skins. A rapid boil can split the fruit and turn the syrup cloudy, so keep it at a low simmer for the full stewing time.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, turkey, fig, port wine. 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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