There is a lot of articles among the Internet talking about the most caloric meals you can eat, but just out of curiosity, I would like to know which is the most caloric single ingredient you can add to you recipes.
At first I thought about sugar, but Wolfram Alpha gives an average result of 378 kcal/100 gr. So I tried with some other options and the winner so far is the extra virgin olive oil (very well known in my country, Spain), with an average result of 884 kcal/100 gr(1). Other similar products are sunflower oil, palm oil, and I suppose any similar oil.
So, is this the most caloric, edible ingredient? Or does anybody know of a more caloric one(2)?
(1) WA miscalculates the amount of fat in extra virgin olive oil, I don't know why. It says that there are 107 grams of fat in 100 grams of product, so I had to do a correction.
(2) According to the calculations in SZCZERZO KŁY's answer and following a clue given by MSalters's comment, lard has a bit more calories (902 kcal) per 100 grams of product. That should be (almost) the limit. These values seem to be taken from the National Nutrient Database made by the United States Department of Agriculture (olive oil, lard).
Best Answer
Your question goes near the answer. As you can read on those nifty tables on products, calories come from mainly three sources: Fats, sugars and protein. There are also fibres, alcohol (that are not counted as carbs) like ethanol and organic acids but the first three is packed with them.
So fat have 9 kcal/g, carbs 4kcal/g and proteins also 4 kcal/g (ethanol have 7 kcal/g but you can't consume it in large quantity like fat).
And from simple math you can deduce that clean fat, like olive oil, is the most caloric, edible ingredient".
PS. Wolfram made a slight change to your question changing the "100 grams" to "107 grams" so that's why it's not "900 kcal/100 g"
Edit: I think the kcal of 1 gram of fat is not exactly 9. It may be around 9,0132 or something like that. That's why WA recalculate the amount and round up, and that's why lard seems to have more. Generally we say that fat is 9cal/gram
Lard can be considered "cleaner" fat as it is processed fat. So it's not contaminated with all those vitamins and micro and macro elements like olive oil.