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Dessert

Fig Fritters

A fried dessert of figs stuffed with cherries, served with almond sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 519 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs and batter

  1. Halve the figs and place two chopped cherries in each half, then close them up.

  2. Prepare a batter with eggs and cream or milk.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Heat boiling fat in a pan and fry the stuffed figs until golden brown.

  2. For almond sauce, blanch 2 oz of almonds in boiling water, remove the skins, and pound them.

  3. Pour ½ pint of boiling milk over the pounded almonds.

  4. Mix the yolk of an egg with a little water and 1 teacup of flour until smooth.

  5. Stir the egg and flour mixture into the almond milk in a saucepan and heat until frothy.

Serve

  1. Serve the fig fritters with the almond sauce.

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 + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

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

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Fig + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Form the soft, sweet filling that is the centre of each fritter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the almond sauce so it becomes smooth and body-rich.
Almonds
Provide the nutty base and body of the almond sauce once pounded.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and flour mixture into the almond milk. Egg and flour must be fully smooth before heating, otherwise lumps form. Heating the egg-thickened sauce gently keeps it from curdling or turning grainy.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, almond, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, almond, milk, flour. 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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