Ingredient Spotlight – Fig Leaves
There’s more to fig leaves than you may have imagined. The generous leaves of the seasonal fig tree offer food and beverages a striking color and enchanting flavor. The fragrance of these edible leaves is nutty, earthy, and sweet, with a mild grassy taste layered with vanilla, coconut, peat, and green walnut.
More About the Fig Leaf
The fig – a member of the mulberry family and a Mediterranean and Asian native – was one of the original cultivated fruits. Its leaves have been used medicinally since ancient times. Researchers traced the first trees back 11,400 years to Jordan in the Middle East. As the plant thrives in warm, dry climates, it is cultivated worldwide today, including in the Americas, Africa, and Australia.
The purportedly anti-inflammatory plant was used to help ease constipation, treat skin ailments such as psoriasis, vitiligo, and eczema, and conditions like high cholesterol and diabetes. The leaves are also nutritious—a source of calcium, vitamins A, B1, and B2, iron, potassium, manganese, phosphorous, and sodium. Notably, you must always cook the leaves before consumption.
How Fig Leaves Are Used
Numerous fig leaf varieties are globally embraced in grilled, steamed, steeped, and baked dishes. The ingredient enhances and infuses flavor into meat, fish, and custard or ice-cream dessert recipes with a sweetly nuanced flavor.
The leaves, powder, and oil are versatile, adding creamy interest to sweet and savory food and beverages. Applications include sauces, seasonings, marinades, stews, soups, batters, curries, teas, kombuchas, syrups, jams, and cocktails. The ingredient infuses effortlessly into various bases, from oils to dairy.
The leaves are also widely used to wrap rice, vegetables, and meats and incorporated into doughs for tasty pastries. Some chefs use the broad leaves to line their pastry dishes for delightfully fragranced bakes. Fig leaves also make an attractive backdrop for dishes, appealing ingredient, and garnish in cocktails.
Fig Leaf-Based Cocktails
You may have heard of or enjoyed one or more of a host of fig leaf-based cocktails and mocktails. These may include Fig Leaf liqueurs, Fig Leaf Highballs, Fig Leaf Old-Fashioned, Fig Leaf Sour, Fig Leaf Vodka Gimlet, Fig Leaf Paloma, or Fig Daquiris with fig leaf syrup.
Why fig leaves? First, the ingredient is novel and intriguing, essential in an era where consumers demand excitement and exotic flavor profiles. Second, the taste of fig leaves is curiously enigmatic, hard to pin down, and harder to define.
Embracing fig leaves can be nutty, savory or sweet – like vanilla and honey – and woody yet tropical. Offering cocktails and any other easily infusible product yielding this unique and enticing profile will surely add to attraction, retention, equity, and the bottom line.
However, always use pure, premium-quality fig leaves and other superior-quality flavor and aroma enhancers for cocktails or any other beverage or food product.
Choose “Figgy” and Other 100% Natural Taste and Odor Extracts From Advanced Biotech
Browse our extensive collection of EU-certified, responsibly sourced, and produced, often plant-based and organic, pyrazines, thiazoles, distillates, oleoresins, and other concentrated extracts. Similar to fig leaves, our pure ingredients enhance your fig-based product’s sensory profile to elevate and differentiate your offering. Please contact us today to request product samples, to place your order, or to speak to an expert.