The Best Tasting Fig
After years of growing figs, I still struggle to answer one simple question, “what is the best tasting fig you have ever had?” The immediate response is often the same. My mind begins to rush and the scientist in me calculates the various advantages and disadvantages for the multiple varieties I grow. After minutes of thinking, all that comes out is “it depends”. That is one terrible answer for all that thinking.
I would then proceed and elaborate on simple facts about popular varieties which still fails to answer the question. The truth is that taste is so subjective. For some people best tasting means sweet, for others it means unexpected, and for few it means indescribable. The last is perhaps the biggest revelation to people learning about figs, how can the flavor of an “inverted” flower exhibit such a wild gamut of flavors and textures. Last time I check, apples taste like apples, peaches are peaches, and a lemon is sweet and citrusy. But a fig can be something completely unexpected. Some figs have pulp that resemble the taste of honey, others taste like melon, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, brown sugar, molasses, simple syrup, peaches, wine, and even artificially flavored hard candy. When it comes to textures, they are equally unpredictable, some varieties are soft almost jelly-like, others dry naturally and resemble fruit leather, some are dry outside but hide nectar inside. How is any of this possible? The taste of figs is so remarkable that even the pick time determines the taste and texture, a day can be the difference between the most amazing explosion of flavors and a melon-tasting piece of plant material. It is almost like figs are the one edible “fruit” that lives in a state of superposition of flavors.
Perhaps I should just finish with the simplest of answers to that question. The best tasting fig I ever had was the first fig I grew rather than the dozens I previously purchased in the supermarket.
These are some of the figs we picked in 2024, just a small batch collected in a sunny summer day.
