William Rabisha’s 1675 Recipe ‘To Pickle Green Figgs’
“Take your green Figgs about August, cut them in halves, and boyl them up in Vinegar, a little quantity of Sugar, large Mace and Cloves, so put them up into your Pot or Glass in the same liquor, they will serve to Garnish your boyled meats or Friggeses in the Winter.”
William Rabisha, The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected, Taught and Fully Manifested… 2nd edition (1675)
Here in our part of the UK we’re getting towards the very end of fig season. Our smallish back garden ‘Brown Turkey’ has had a pretty good year: we’ve enjoyed at least two dozen plump, ripe, syrupy, fresh figs over the past few weeks. Delicious!
But, as is usual in our distinctly non-Mediterranean climate, there are still a fair few smallish green figs left on the tree which just aren’t going to ripen before temperatures start to drop away. Neither will they over-winter particularly well; experience shows that the first frost will damage them, and they’ll eventually drop from the tree, either in the winter months, or once the tree wakes from dormancy in spring.
A fruit-growing friend of mine suggested that picking these small figs from the tree round about now1Or maybe I should have done it back at the end of August… gives it a chance to regenerate new fruit buds that will remain small enough – most sources suggest pea-sized or smaller – to survive the frosts and grow on next year.
That’s an experiment I plan to carry out, so I’ll be picking dozens of small, rock-hard, bright green figs this weekend. The question then is: what to do with them?
I searched online and found a few unripe fig recipes and suggestions on what to do if you’re stuck with unripe figs, and a few other recipes for green fig jam, or grilled green figs, but I do get the impression that these are intended to use up figs that are almost ripe, rather than distinctly under-ripe.
Enter William Rabisha – master cook to the nobility of Britain and Europe, according to his self-penned biography in the introduction to The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected, Taught and Fully Manifested in 1661 – and his recipe for pickling halved green figs, by very simply boiling them in vinegar, with sugar, mace, and cloves. That’s all there is to it.
The problem is that I know the figs on my tree will be filled with a latex-like sap – a skin irritant that can in some cases cause severe phytodermatitis – and I really have no idea, nor can I find a definitive answer online, as to whether this sap will be removed or neutralised by boiling in vinegar, and whether the figs will be safe to eat afterwards. If you happen to know the answer, then please do let me know in turn, either via the comments, or by email.
Also, if anyone knows what “Friggeses” are – my first guess is that it has something to do with a fricasee? – then please do pass on the information.
In the meantime, here’s a bonus William Rabisha recipe from the same volume: “To Pickle Bog-berries”.
“Boyl up some Vinegar and Sugar together, and pour it in, being hot, into your Pot or Vessel where your Bog-berries are : And they will serve to garnish your dishes all the Winter ; you may do the like to pickle Hogg-haws; only boyl them up if they are not ripe.”
Bog-berries are presumably either Vaccinium uglinosum, the bog-bilberry, or Vaccinium myrtilus, the common bilberry, which can still be found growing in a few of the wilder and acid-soiled parts of the UK. Hogg-haws sound likely to be some form of Crataegus, a.k.a. Hawthorn? If so I have access to a plentiful supply of those, although I’m not sure how palatable they sound.
What about you? Do you know of any good uses that seriously under-ripe figs could be put to, or are they just fodder for the compost-heap? Do you prefer the sound of pickled bog-berries and/or hogg-haws instead? Can you suggest any other foraged berries that are good for pickling and preserving? Please do let me know if so, via the comments.
Footnotes
- 1Or maybe I should have done it back at the end of August… ↩︎
One recipe I found says to parboil the unripe figs in water for a short time to neutralize the latex, then use them in the recipe.
Ah, thank you Lori, that’s good to know.
Hi there… I am from a Greek background. We prepare green unripe hard figs, just as yo are talking about, into what we call ‘spoon sweets’.. gliko tou koutaliou… many unripe veg/fruit are done this way, as well as peels of some citrus etc. For figs, we cut an x in the bottom or pierce the sides several times and then bring to a boil in a large amount of water for about 10 mins. Drain and repeat once or twice more. Once this step is done, we proceed to cook/preserve them in a thick sugar syrup. Adding lemon juice at the end to prevent crystalization. This preparation is shelf stable even without being canned/hot water processed and is a hospitality item. Visitors will be offered a minimum of a coffee and one of these ‘candied’ items, fig or otherwise, on usually crystal small plates with a demitasse spoon.. the eponimous ‘spoon’ of ‘spoon sweets’. I hope that helps??
Hi John – Thank you very much indeed, that’s absolutely superb. The triple boil-and-rinse must be the measure that neutralises the latex sap, and then the syrup preservation, as you say gives them their storage potential. Perfect timing as well, as I haven’t picked off this year’s green figs yet, so I think I’ll give your method a go (just as soon as the current storm stops and I can get out into the back garden to pick them, without being blown down the street).
I think bogbrerry are nowadays called cranberries.
Hi Kitty – yes, of course, it could be referring to the native British cranberry, couldn’t it? Good point, well made.