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Dessert

Fig and Nut Icing

A sweet icing made with sugar, water, egg white, figs, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fig and Nut Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture becomes brittle when dropped in cold water.

  3. Remove from heat and quickly stir in the well-beaten egg white.

  4. Add the finely chopped figs and nuts, and mix well.

Assemble

  1. Spread the icing between layers and on top of your 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. Fig + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

  5. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the cooked syrup that sets into the icing's structure and sweetness.
Egg white
Whipped into the hot syrup to add lightness and help the icing set firm.
Figs
Add moisture, sweetness and a chewy texture to the icing.
Nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, rich flavour that contrasts the soft filling.

The step that matters

Boil until brittle in cold water. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set properly. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and sticky once it cools.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, fig. 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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