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Dessert

Fig Tart

A baked tart of sliced figs stewed with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and butter, finished with pastry layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Fig Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Cut the figs into small slices using scissors.

  2. Add enough milk to cover the figs, then add sugar and cinnamon.

Stew and assemble

  1. Stew the mixture in an earthenware jar, covered, in the oven until boiling.

  2. Once boiling, the milk will break; remove from the oven and stir in the butter.

  3. Line a flat dish with pastry and spread a thick layer of figs on it, heaping them in the center.

  4. Pour in as much syrup as the figs will absorb, then cover with a thin layer of pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown; this tart is better served 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main filling and, once stewed, provide sweetness and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the figs soften and form a syrup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, rounded texture.
Milk
Cooks with the figs and sugar to form the syrup that moistens the filling.

The step that matters

Stewing until the milk breaks. Milk curdles when it boils and separates into solids and liquid. Removing the dish from the oven at that point and stirring in the butter keeps the filling smooth rather than grainy or overcooked.

Swap the fig

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, cinnamon. 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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