Fig Creams
Cut each fig in six or eight pieces and proceed as for walnut creams.
This is a cross-reference entry: the whole method lives in the walnut creams recipe, and this line only tells you to swap the nut for cut fig. A few things need spelling out for anyone working from the page alone.
- The missing half of the recipe"Creams" in this period generally means fondant: sugar and water, often with a little cream of tartar or glucose, boiled to the soft-ball stage (around 238-240F by modern thermometers), poured out, cooled, then worked with a spatula until it turns white and opaque. Walnut creams are usually small balls or patties of fondant with the nut pressed into the top, or sandwiched between two patties; here fig pieces take the nut's place. The details are in the walnut creams entry, not this one.
- Which figsDried figs rather than fresh. In American confectionery of this period that would usually mean pressed Smyrna or layer figs; modern dried Calimyrna or Turkish figs behave much the same. Fresh figs will weep juice into the fondant and soften it.
- Cutting sticky fruitSix or eight pieces per fig gives roughly bite-sized wedges. Oil the knife lightly or dip it in hot water between cuts, and trim off the hard stem tip, which will not soften in the mouth.
- Fondant temperature when you work itFondant must be pliable but not warm — around body temperature. Too warm and it slumps off the fig; too cool and it cracks. Reheat stiff fondant in a bowl set over hot, not boiling, water.
- Setting and storageLeave the finished creams on waxed paper in a cool, dry room for several hours to firm and crust over. Stored airtight between layers of waxed paper they keep a week or two; refrigeration is best avoided, as chilled fondant picks up condensation and loses its texture.
- YieldThe original gives none. A pound of fondant with about 8 oz of dried figs makes roughly 40 to 50 small confections, depending on how generous the coating is.
"Creams" in nineteenth-century American confectionery meant fondant — cooked sugar beaten to an opaque paste — and one batch could be turned into a long list of them, changing only the fruit or nut pressed into the top: walnut creams, almond creams, date creams, fig creams. That may be why this entry is one sentence long. Figs reached American kitchens by more than one route: pressed Smyrna figs had long been imported in flat boxes and dominated the market, while Californian growers around Fresno were planting heavily in the 1880s and 1890s, though the Smyrna variety was not made commercially viable in California until the turn of the century. Fondant work of this kind was also a way of using fruit that had dried past the point of pleasant eating on its own — a sugar coating covers a good deal.