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Black Figs
Wash figs and soak over night in cold water. Boil slowly for five minutes in same water in which they were soaked; add sugar to taste; cook until sugar is dissolved; place in cooker for three or four hours. Serve cold with cream.
A fireless-cooker recipe: the pot is brought to a boil on the stove, then sealed into an insulated box to coast for hours on its own retained heat. The method translates directly to modern equipment.
- "Black figs" means driedThese are dried dark figs, most likely the type now sold as Mission figs. Fresh figs need no overnight soak and would collapse in three hours of heat.
- The cookerA fireless cooker was an insulated box with a soapstone or metal radiator disc, not a heat source. A slow cooker on low, a covered heavy pot in a 200°F oven, or a wide-mouth vacuum flask all do the same work; the point is to hold the fruit hot without further boiling.
- Bring it fully to the boil firstThe hinge of all fireless cookery is that the food enters the box at a genuine rolling boil in a pot filled nearly to the top. A part-heated or half-empty pot loses temperature too fast and the figs stay tough.
- Keep the soaking waterNot thrift for its own sake — the soaking liquid already carries dissolved fig sugars and colour, and it becomes the syrup. Use enough water to keep the figs generously covered.
- Sugar to tasteDried figs are already very sweet; ¼ cup sugar per pound is plenty, and some cooks add none. A strip of lemon peel or a spoon of lemon juice keeps the syrup from tasting flat.
- Add sugar after the initial boilAs written, and worth following: sugar added at the start firms the skins and slows softening. Stir it in once the figs have had their five minutes.
- Timing in a slow cookerThree to four hours of declining heat in a fireless cooker is roughly two to three hours on a slow cooker's low setting. Stop when the figs are plump and tender and the liquid has thickened slightly; they will thicken further as they cool.
- Yield and servingA pound of dried figs serves six as a compote. Chill thoroughly and serve with cream, or with plain yoghurt or crème fraîche if the sweetness needs cutting.
Fireless cookery was a genuine craze in American households from about 1905 through the First World War. The principle was old — the European "hay box," in which a boiling pot was buried in insulating straw — but it was commercialised as a tidy wooden or metal cabinet with nested wells and heavy soapstone discs that could be preheated on the range. The appeal was fuel: a coal or wood range heated the kitchen unbearably in summer and cost money to keep going, so anything that could be started in five minutes and finished by retained heat was a real economy. Dried fruit compotes were the ideal demonstration dish, since they ask only for long gentle hydration and cannot easily be spoiled by inattention. The figs themselves would most likely have been California-grown Mission figs, dried in the sun in the Central Valley and shipped east in boxes — an inexpensive and reliable pantry sweet in a season with little fresh fruit.