Name: Stuffed Figs
Ingredients: steamed figs; chopped nuts; fondant; granulated sugar

Why it works: Fig and nuts work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Stuffed Figs

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

steamed figs
chopped nuts
fondant
granulated sugar

Directions

Open the steamed figs at the stem end.
Fill each fig with chopped nuts.
Mix the nuts with fondant.
Roll the stuffed figs in granulated sugar.

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.

Fig + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together154 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,241 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

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