Spiced Figs
Wash 1/2 pound pulled figs, and soak 1 hour in Cold water to cover. Drain, put in saucepan with 1 cup vinegar and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Put in a cheesecloth bag 1 tablespoon whole cloves and a 12-inch stick of cinnamon broken in pieces, and cook all for 50 minutes or until figs are tender.
A sweet-sour fig relish of the kind that appeared alongside cold meats on luncheon tables. It is straightforward, but two terms in it no longer mean what they did.
- "Pulled figs"Apparently dried figs that have been stemmed and flattened or pulled apart by hand. Ordinary dried Mission or Calimyrna figs work; snip off the hard stem tips before soaking.
- The cinnamon stickCinnamon was once sold in long quills, which is why the recipe can call for a 12-inch stick. Modern sticks run about 3 inches, so use four, broken up. Bagging the spices in cheesecloth matters here, since loose cloves in a syrup are unpleasant to bite into.
- VinegarUnspecified. Cider vinegar is the likeliest intention, and cider or white wine vinegar both suit the figs better than distilled white.
- The 50 minutesLong by modern instinct, but correct: the time is there to let the figs absorb syrup and plump, not merely to soften them. Keep the heat at a bare simmer. A hard boil reduces the syrup to candy before the fruit is done.
- ConsistencyToward the end the syrup should coat a spoon lightly. If it is still thin when the figs are tender, lift the fruit out and reduce the syrup on its own, then pour it back.
- Yield and keepingAbout one pint. The recipe gives no canning directions and should not be treated as a preserving recipe: cool, jar, and refrigerate, where it keeps several weeks. Use a tested current recipe if you want shelf-stable jars.
- ServingBest treated as a condiment rather than a dessert: two or three figs per person with cold ham, tongue, roast chicken or a cheese course.
Spiced fruit in a vinegar-and-sugar syrup was a staple of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American table, where a sharp sweet pickle was expected beside any cold platter; peaches, pears, crabapples and figs were all treated this way with much the same clove-and-cinnamon spicing. Figs made particular sense in this role because the dried fruit was available year-round and cheap in bulk, so the dish did not depend on a season. The whole spices tied in cheesecloth belong to the same tradition of pickling with unground cinnamon and cloves.