To Dry Figs
There are several methods in vogue for this, a California treatment of them (Dr. Eisen's) reported by the Department of Agriculture (Div. of Pomol., Bul. No. 1) being the following: "When the figs began to wilt and show small white seams they were cut from the tree by means of scissors or a knife, then carefully placed on trays similar to raisin trays. (An improvement is here suggested of nailing laths to form longitudinal ribs across the tray-bottoms.) By placing the figs with the eye elevated on the rib the sugary contents are prevented from leaking out. The figs are now placed in the sun to dry turned every day, at first separately by hand, but when partially dried were turned as we turn raisin trays. Every night they were covered over. . ..
The figs are sufficiently dry when they show the same dryness in the morning as the evening. If not sufficiently dried they will puff up and spoil. It is, however, a great danger. to overdry the figs Such figs will get a cooked and earthy taste. ... It took from five to twelve days to dry the figs, according to the weather. When dry they may be dumped into sweat boxes for a few days but the better way is to dip and pack them right away. Now prepare a kettle or tub with boiling water, in which is put enough common unrefined rock salt, such as is used for cattle; table salt will not do.
Sea water may be preferable.
About three big handfuls of rock salt to one gallon of water is enough. When the salt is dissolved and the water is again boiling immerse the figs for two seconds; immediately afterwards thumb the figs, and work the eye of the fig downward and the stalk end upward. This process is necessary. First, it distributes the thicker skin around the eye of the fig evenly, and in eating we thus get equal parts of the thicker ... and thinner skin. Secondly, it places the fine skin of the stalk end on top, and when the figs are packed and pressed they present a beautiful smooth surface. I believe the dipping of the figs in boiling salt water may be dispensed with if the figs are sufficiently pliable without it. But it is absolutely indispensable to dip the figs in salt water, and during the thumbing of the figs the hands of the packer must be constantly moistened by salt water or the sugar will stick to the fingers and make the operation almost impossible.
The figs taste at first exceedingly salt but after a few days the salt works into the fig and gives it a peculiar appetising taste, counteracting the excessive sweetness. 6 "The heavy pressing of the figs, which is always so strong that it causes them to burst at the stalk end is much objected to by the consumer, as it evidently defaces the fig. But, nevertheless, this compression is absolutely necessary. It prevents insects from entering between them and it prevents the air entering, thus drying out the fig.
A second California method reported (Mr. Burnham, of Riverside) was to pick the figs when wilted and while yet green to treat it to "a strong sulphur bath," then putting in the sun to dry, after this sweating it in sacks, then packing.
A Florida method "H. R." (Farmer and Fruit Grower) is to gather the figs when fully ripe but before they crack open. The fruit should be placed "in a wire basket and dip it into a deep kettle of hot lye made from wood ashes. Let it remain in the lye a minute or two to remove the gum and milk and until the figs begin to shrivel slightly. Let all the lye drip off the figs, place them in a kettle or vat of boiling syrup, and let them remain in it three or four minutes. Then dip them out with a skimmer, let the syrup run off entirely and place the fruit at once in a dryer or evaporator. When sufficiently dry let them become perfectly cool and pack very close in drums or boxes, pressing the fruit down compactly with a small lever." Figs form their own sugar in packing but spices may be placed between the layers, or the Southern sweet bay, if time and fancy so dictate.
A simpler method is to pick when ripe and dry on trays in the sun, turning every day and pressing flat with the hand. Pack in layers and keep in a dry place.
CHAPTER XXII
This is a commercial drying-yard procedure from the era when California was trying to break Smyrna's hold on the dried fig trade, transcribed into a home cookery book. Three of the four methods given rely on treatments that cannot be measured or controlled in a domestic setting, and the fourth leaves the fruit at an unknown moisture content.
- Lye from wood ashesThe Florida method dips the fruit in "hot lye made from wood ashes" — potassium hydroxide of entirely unknown strength, varying with the wood burned, the ash, and how long it steeped. Lye dipping to check the skin is a real technique in fruit drying, but it depends on a known concentration and a thorough rinse, neither of which this text supplies. There is no way to judge from the page whether the solution is weak enough to be safe or strong enough to burn.
- The sulphur bath"A strong sulphur bath" is not explained in the text. In this period it most often meant fumigation with sulphur dioxide from sulphur burnt in a closed chamber, though a dip in sulphurous acid solution was also in use. Sulphuring is still done commercially under strict controls on exposure time and residual sulphite levels. Burning sulphur in an enclosed space at home produces a respiratory irritant at concentrations that are genuinely dangerous, and the residue on the fruit is unquantifiable and hazardous to people sensitive to sulphites.
- No moisture standardThe test offered — "the same dryness in the morning as the evening" — is a field rule of thumb, not a measurement. Dried figs need to reach a water activity low enough to stop mould, and the text itself concedes that under-dried figs "puff up and spoil." What it does not say is that mould on figs can include Aspergillus species that produce aflatoxin, which is not destroyed by later cooking.
- Open-air drying and insectsFigs drying in the open on trays for five to twelve days, covered only at night, attract dried-fruit beetles and vinegar flies, which carry mould and yeast into the open eye of the fruit. The recipe's own answer is heavy pressing to keep insects out after the fact, which does nothing about what has already entered the ostiole.
- Packing without pasteurisationThe figs are pressed into boxes with nothing done to kill insect eggs or surface organisms. Commercial dried figs are pasteurised or frozen before packing precisely because compression and long storage otherwise incubate whatever went in with them.
- Salt dip and "thumbing"The brine here is not a preservative at that strength — roughly three handfuls of rock salt to a gallon, and a two-second dip. Its purpose is to soften the skin for handling and to cut the sweetness. "Thumbing" simply means pressing the fruit flat by hand so the tough skin around the eye is distributed evenly and the smooth stalk end faces outward in the box.
- Sweat boxesA period term for closed wooden boxes in which partly dried fruit was held so that moisture could equalise between drier and wetter pieces before packing. Eisen prefers to skip the step and pack immediately.
- If you want dried figsUse a current tested procedure from a food-preservation extension service, which will specify pretreatment, dehydrator temperature, target moisture and a post-drying pasteurising step. None of those numbers exists in this text and it is not our place to supply them.
The first and longest method here is credited to Dr. Gustav Eisen, the Swedish-born naturalist attached to the California Academy of Sciences who became the leading American authority on the fig and whose The Fig: Its History, Culture, and Curing was issued by the Department of Agriculture at the turn of the century. His interest was not domestic: through the 1880s and 1890s California growers were trying to reproduce the Smyrna fig of Asia Minor, which dominated the American dried-fruit market, and the effort stalled for years because the Smyrna variety will not set fruit without pollination by a wasp carried from the wild caprifig ement is generally credited to the Department of Agriculture, and chiefly to W. T. Swingle, who succeeded in introducing the wasp in 1899. The curing detail in this passage, the salt dip, the thumbing, the insistence on compression until the fruit bursts at the stalk, is all aimed at matching the appearance and keeping quality of the imported Smyrna article in a box on a grocer's shelf. Its appearance in a book of fruit recipes says a good deal about the period's readership: a household cookery collection could still assume readers with a fig tree in the yard and an interest in what the Department of Agriculture had to say about it. The last two lines, offering bay leaves between the layers and a plain sun-drying on trays, are the compiler quietly returning the subject to the kitchen.