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Dessert

Figs a LA Genevieve

A sweet and tart fig dish simmered with sugar, lemon, and wine, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and fig match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 763 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Figs a LA Genevieve

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the figs

  1. Dissolve sugar in cold water in an enameled stewpan with the lemon rind.

  2. Add the figs and stew slowly over moderate heat until soft, about 2 to 2.5 hours.

  3. Stir in the wine and strained lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve hot as a second course or cold for dessert.

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. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Fig + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Form the main body of the dish, softening into a tender, spoonable texture as they stew.
Sugar
Dissolves into the water to make a sweet syrup that the figs soak up as they cook.
Port or other wine
Adds depth and aroma, and its alcohol and sugars round out the syrup's flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the wine.

The step that matters

Stew slowly over moderate heat. Gentle heat softens the fig flesh and its fibrous cell walls evenly without bursting the skins or scorching the sugar syrup. Rushing with high heat can leave figs broken and the syrup bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, turkey, fig, wine. 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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