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Cakes of Figs
Cook ripe, peeled figs slowly in double boiler with a little sugar and flavouring (if liked), till smooth and thick. Almonds may be added while cooking. Pour into shallow moulds or pans and dry slowly in sun, oven, or dryer, when perfectly dry cutting in squares or strips and wrapping in oiled paper or storing in dry place. These may be used for cookery as are the commercial figs.
This is a fruit paste, not a cake in the flour-and-butter sense: cooked fig pulp dried down until it can be cut and handled. The whole thing hinges on driving off enough moisture that the slab keeps without molding.
- QuantitiesThe original gives none. Two pounds of ripe figs with 2 to 4 tablespoons of sugar fills an 8-inch square pan to about half an inch and yields roughly 24 to 30 pieces. Sugar here is for flavour and keeping quality, not structure.
- Peeling ripe figsFully ripe figs can often be skinned by hand, and a brief dip in boiling water helps loosen the skins, though they do not slip as readily as tomatoes. Fresh figs are also perfectly good unpeeled; the skins simply leave dark flecks and a slightly chewier paste.
- Double boilerThe gentle heat is deliberate — fig purée is thick and scorches easily over direct flame. A heavy saucepan over low heat with frequent stirring works, but the double boiler is genuinely the safer bet and needs an hour or more to reach a thick, mounding paste.
- FlavouringThe recipe specifies none; plausible choices are lemon or orange zest, a little lemon juice, or a spice such as cinnamon or clove. Lemon juice is worth adding regardless: figs are low in acid, and the acid brightens an otherwise flat sweetness.
- AlmondsBlanched and coarsely chopped, stirred in near the end of cooking. Toast them first; they will not crisp inside the wet paste.
- Drying, oven versionThe lowest setting your oven allows — 150 to 170F, door propped ajar — for 6 to 12 hours depending on thickness. A dehydrator at 135F is the modern equivalent. The slab is done when the surface is dry and leathery, not tacky, and a cut edge shows no wet centre.
- Sun dryingPractical only in genuine dry heat with strong sun and low humidity, covered against insects and brought in before evening dew. In a humid climate the paste will ferment or mold before it dries; use the oven.
- StorageOiled paper is the period answer to pieces sticking together; parchment does the same job. Store airtight in a cool, dry place. Any surface moisture or sheen means it needs more drying time — this keeps for months when properly dry and spoils quickly when not.
- Using it in cookery"As are the commercial figs" means the dried block figs sold for baking. Chop and use in puddings, fruitcakes and fig bars, or soften in warm water or juice before mincing.
Cooking fruit pulp down and drying it in slabs is one of the oldest preserving methods there is, and figs, being both very sweet and very abundant at once, are among the classic candidates — the practice is documented around the Mediterranean and in Persia and Turkey long before it reached American cookbooks. What changed by the time this book was written was the supply: California fig planting expanded around the turn of the century — large-scale Smyrna fig production there succeeded only after the fig wasp was introduced at the end of the 1890s — and household writers began treating figs as a domestic crop to be put up rather than an imported luxury bought in pressed blocks from Smyrna. The closing line is the giveaway about the book's purpose — the point is not a confection but a homemade substitute for the commercial baking fig, which is exactly the kind of import-replacement thrift these fruit manuals were written to encourage. The same technique, under other names, gives quince paste, guava paste and apricot leather.