I’m looking for names of figs that have one or more unique flavors that should not be left out of laboratory tests.
Please list them below if they haven’t been added already.
Thanks!
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Hi Richard. The White Baca has the flavor of a peach Bellini Royale (peach nectar infused with champagne). Out of this world mind blowing flavor!
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Great, another fig variety I want…lol
Exquisito is the most uniquely flavored fig I grow. And it varies a lot. It’s best when the plant is grown on the dry side in hot sunny weather. Then it has some kind of tropical flavors.
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Would be very interesting to see if the “cherry fig” category is just a proxy for acidic berry figs, or if there is something going on with the actual flavor compounds, Cavaliere and Hative d’Argenteuil would be the ones to test.
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Izbat an Naj Is a yellow fig, when fully ripe does have a banana-pineapple flavor. It does not seem to do well in hot dry areas but performs well in my mild Michigan summers. Which is surprising since it’s from Egypt.
Smith doesn’t really have a unique flavor but has a thick skin which prevents splitting. Really a premium fig for wet climates. Ripens well here too. One of my favorites. As it gives an abundance of premium figs in less than ideal environments.
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Seems like some figs do have benzaldehyde, which is the key component to cherry flavor, so it’s possible those cultivars have more of it.
Of course, with aroma compounds, there is rarely a simple relationship between the abundance of a compound and its impact on aroma and flavor. There’s just too many factors that affect how we interpret what we smell. For example, benzaldehyde might smell like cherries to one person and bitter almonds to another. For some people, whether it’s cherries or almonds depends on the concentration of the compound. Someone who has never had marzipan or almond flavored things might never associate benzaldehyde with the smell of almonds, whereas I was exposed to almond flavor much more than cherry flavored products as a child, and benzaldehyde always smells like almonds to me.
Benzaldehyde is also a key component of the aroma of peaches and apricots, so in other figs, it might shift aroma comparisons towards those fruits rather than cherries.
Artificial blackberry flavor uses B-ionone, which is also a major component of violet fragrance. Most Americans, however, are more familiar with blackberries than violets, so they have trouble distinguishing the two when smelling them blindfolded. When someone describes a red wine as smelling like “dark fruit” that’s often due to B-ionone. Add in the fact that a good percentage (30% I think) of the population has trouble detecting B-ionone to begin with, and you can start to see how complicated this gets.
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I’m currently tracking 120 compounds in 9 chemical categories for fig flavor. My focus is on establishing a flavor chemistry coordinate system for fig – something analogous to coordinate systems used for colors. Future researchers could then determine what coordinates are most often associated with flavor X.
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Good points!
To me, ever since the gen chem lab I first smelt the stuff directly, benzaldehyde has always smelled like almonds. I guess to evoke the “cherry” association it’s best to combine benzaldehyde with acid, sugar, and maybe some other stuff like eugenol.
The chemistry of flavor is definitely a tricky one at times. There are weird extremes where sometimes it’s just the ratio of like two chemicals that determine if something smells like lavender or bergamot, and sometimes it’s a crazy chemical soup.
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Just a note I have had figs taste a lot like cherry, but once plant was bigger that flavor disappeared. Not sure why this is so? So for me I have to wait 3 or 4 years to get a true reading of the flavor profile of any one fig.
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@Drew51
I’m not trying to associate flavor names with figs – that is a future project for someone else.
Right, I think your comment to that effect was pretty clear. I was replying to Grapenut’s comment about benzaldehyde, in hindsight I probably should have quoted it to prevent any ambiguity.
Just mapping out the space without trying to do labeling, like you’re doing, sounds like a realistic approach, especially since flavor associations have as much to do with the subject as the object.
Out of curiosity, what’s the main technique you’re going to be using, HPLC?
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Yeah just putting some info out there. Thanks for all the work with figs. Much appreciated. This project is interesting. Looking forward to seeing the results.
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@a_Vivaldi
I will use orthogonal tensor decomposition to determine canonical tensor order(s) of the domain of concentrations, and within them families of metric spaces that provide unit tensor coordinate systems. From those I will pick one that has significant alignment to actual figs.
I conducted an untargeted GCMS analysis of volatile compounds from 140 grape genotypes. Analyzing the data and identifying the compounds was tedious, to say the least. Hopefully you have a better method than I did.
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I’m looking for names of figs that have one or more unique flavors that should not be left out of laboratory tests.
Here’s the names recommended so far:
Joualle Noir
Bubble Gum
Boysenberry Blush
Meteorito
White Baca
Exquisito
Cavaliere
Hative d’Argenteuil
Izbat an Naj
Ponte Tresa
Perola
Cherry Cordial
Ronde de Bordeaux
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I would add Red Israel KK fig…there is confusion about the name, but I am 100% sure that this fig is unique, and the flavor is special for a fig.
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I’m adding these:
Violette de Bordeaux
CA Osborn Prolific
Tia Penya
Genovese Bianco
Janice Seedless Kadota
Winter Peach
Adriatic
Battaglia Green
Black Jack
Thermalito
Yellow Long Neck
Socorro Black
Black Madeira
I-258
Barnissotte
Bourjasotte Grise
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