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Dessert

Fig Cake Filling

A fruit filling made from raisins, figs, sugar, lemon juice, and corn starch, cooked in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Cake Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped raisins.

  2. Boil the chopped figs in just enough water to cover them.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the corn-starch mixed with a little cold water and cook with the figs, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the raisins, granulated sugar, and lemon juice. Mix well.

  3. Spread the filling over sheets of cake.

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. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Fig + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Break down when boiled to form the bulk of the thick, spreadable filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and body to the filling as they soften in hot water.
Corn-starch
Thickens the fruit mixture as it cooks, giving it a spreadable, set texture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling its soft, glossy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn-starch into the figs. Cornstarch must be cooked with the fruit while stirring constantly, because it thickens only when heated and can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan if left still.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, corn, 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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