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Dessert

Fig Rock

A candied fig confection made by boiling sugar and water, adding cream of tartar, figs, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fig Rock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the toasted figs.

  2. Boil the sugar and water together without stirring until it turns amber in color.

Set and pour

  1. Add the cream of tartar and then the figs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking tin.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Cream + figtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves in water and cooks to a hard, amber caramel that sets the rock firm and sweet.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the boiled sugar smooth and stops it from crystallising.
Figs
Add fruit flavour, sweetness and a chewy texture to the set caramel.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar to amber. Stirring can make the sugar crystallise, and once it turns amber it darkens quickly and can burn. Watch the colour closely, since amber caramel goes from golden to bitter within seconds.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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