French culinary expression: MI-FIGUE, Ml-RAISIN
You imagine a sort of graft, of crossing between the two fruits which would retain the very sweet taste of the fig and take on the more subtle flavor of the grape...
Even if this phrase which appeared in the 15th century in the form "half fig, half grape" probably owes little to the inventive manipulations of the gardener, the result is quite mixed and the meaning is to be found in the balance between two different things: pleasantness and unpleasantness, goodwill and constraint, friendliness and roughness, feminine of fig and masculine of grape.
And the terms would rather be reversed, if we refer to the images conveyed by the two fruits since Antiquity, the fig being very common in Greece, negligible, the grapes being more refined.
The anecdote that the Corinthians once mixed in their exports to Venice worthless figs with prized grapes, for good weight, is doubtless unreliable.
The fact that figs and grapes, the two dried fruits consumed at the time of Lent, were by tradition close and complementary, does it not provide a further justification for this figurative use?
