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Dessert

Honey Bread Fingers

A dried bread finger made with wheat, figs, prunes, bananas, and honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Honey Bread Fingers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the coarsely ground wheat, chopped figs, chopped prunes, beaten bananas, and strained honey.

  2. Roll the mixture out to a thickness of ¼ inch.

Cut and dry

  1. Slice into finger-width strips.

  2. Place the strips in the sun to dry, or use an electric oven.

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 + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Fig + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

  3. Banana + honeytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

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

  5. Wheat + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarsely ground wheat
Provides the main body and structure that holds the fingers together.
Figs
Add sweetness and a chewy texture as they dry.
Prunes
Add sweetness, moisture and a dense, chewy texture.
Bananas
Add moisture and help bind the mixture into a cohesive dough.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the mixture hold together.

The step that matters

Drying the strips. The strips must dry thoroughly. Removing enough moisture makes them firm and keeps them from staying soft and spoiling, while under-drying leaves them sticky and prone to spoilage.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, fig, honey):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, fig, honey. 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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