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Dessert

After-dinner Fios

A preserved fig dessert made by boiling figs with sugar and ginger, drying, sugaring, and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

After-dinner Fios

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and dry the figs

  1. Boil the figs, sugar, and ginger-root until clear and tender.

  2. Lift the figs separately from the syrup with a fork and lay them on dishes in hot sun.

Finish and pack

  1. When dry enough to handle (after two or three days), roll the figs in sugar.

  2. Pack the dried figs in 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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 (in the method)
Form the bulk of the fruit, softening in the syrup and drying into a chewy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as syrup, draws out water so the figs keep well.
Ginger-root
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor to the syrup and figs.

The step that matters

Drying the figs in the sun. Figs must dry until they are no longer sticky before they are rolled and packed. Removing too much moisture leaves them tough, while leaving too much lets them spoil or ferment in the jars.

“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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