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Dessert

Stewed Figs.

A sweet stew of figs cooked 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

Prepare the syrup

  1. In an enamelled or copper stewpan, combine the sugar, lemon rind, and cold water.

  2. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves.

Stew the figs

  1. Add the figs and place the stewpan over moderate heat to gently stew.

  2. Cook for 2 to 2.5 hours until the figs are tender.

  3. Stir in the port wine and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Arrange the 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

Turkey figs
Provide the main body and soft, tender texture once stewed slowly.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the figs keep their shape and gloss.
Port wine
Adds depth, fruitiness and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and figs.

The step that matters

Stewing gently until tender. Slow, gentle heat softens the fig flesh and lets the syrup absorb flavour evenly. Boiling hard can break the figs apart and make the syrup cloudy.

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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