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Dessert

Fig Preserve

A sweet preserve made by cooking figs with sugar until the syrup coats the fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Fig Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the figs

  1. Gather ripe figs, ensuring they are not cracked.

  2. Dip figs in hot lye or soak in lime water for 1 hour, then drain.

Make and cook the jam

  1. Make a syrup with 2 pounds of sugar and 2 pounds of figs.

  2. Add drained figs to the syrup and cook well.

  3. Remove from heat and boil down the syrup until it just covers the fruit.

  4. Boil all together for 1 minute.

Seal

  1. Seal the mixture hot in glass or porcelain jars.

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 + limetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

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

  2. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + limetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe figs
Provide the fruit that forms the body and flavor of the jam.
Sugar
Sweetens the jam and, as it thickens, helps set it and preserve the fruit.
Lime water or lye
Softens the fig skins so the fruit cooks more evenly in the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil down the syrup until it just covers the fruit. Sugar concentrates as water evaporates, so the syrup thickens and helps the jam set. Boiling too little leaves it runny and prone to spoiling; boiling too long can make it stiff and overly sweet.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, sugar. 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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