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Fig Dainty
1/2 pound whole figs 1/2 cup chopped nuts Juice of 1/2 lemon Dash of nutmeg 3 tablespoons sugar 1/2 cup water Mix the ingredients; cover and cook until tender. Serve with coffee and plain bread and butter sandwiches.
A chafing-dish compote of dried figs, meant to be assembled and stewed at the table over a spirit lamp. It works just as well in a small covered saucepan on the stove.
- Which figs"Whole figs" here most likely means dried figs sold whole rather than in pressed blocks, stems trimmed; the recipe does not specify a variety. Half a pound is roughly 12 to 16 dried figs, or about 1 1/2 cups. Fresh figs would collapse into jam in this liquid.
- The liquid is barely enoughHalf a cup of water for half a pound of dried fruit relies on the lid trapping steam. Keep it covered, keep the heat low, and add a spoonful of water if the pan threatens to go dry before the figs soften.
- Timing"Until tender" is 25 to 35 minutes at a bare simmer for dried figs left whole. If you halve them first it drops to about 15 minutes. Adding the lemon juice at the start is fine — the acid slows softening only slightly at this scale.
- Chafing-dish heatIf you are using a chafing dish, cook in the blazer set directly over the flame; the hot-water pan cannot exceed 212F and will soften the figs only very slowly. On a stove, the smallest burner on its lowest setting.
- NutsAdd the chopped nuts in the last five minutes rather than at the outset. The recipe does not say which nuts; simmered the whole time they lose their texture.
- SweetnessThree tablespoons of sugar on top of dried figs makes this quite sweet by current taste. Two is enough if the figs are good, and the lemon juice is what keeps it from cloying — do not leave it out.
- Yield and servingEnough for about four small dishes, with the syrup spooned over. The plain bread-and-butter sandwiches are specified in the recipe, presumably to offset the sweetness of the fruit.
Chafing-dish cookery had a long vogue in American middle-class homes from the 1890s into the 1920s. The appeal was as much social as culinary: a spirit lamp and a nickel-plated pan let a hostess produce something warm at the table without a servant, which suited late suppers and card parties, and chafing dishes were associated with the fudge-making of women's colleges of the era. Dishes in the genre had to be forgiving, quick and made from shelf-stable goods, and dried figs — imported from Smyrna and, by this period, also grown in California — fit that description. "Dainty" appears in period usage for a small sweet trifle rather than a formal dessert, and the pairing with coffee and bread and butter suggests an evening rather than an end-of-dinner dish.