Why it works: Dates and walnut work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Stuffed Dates
Ingredients
Directions
Soak the dates in water until softened.
Remove the pits from the dates.
Stuff the dates with pecan kernels or broken English walnuts.
Roll the stuffed dates in powdered or granulated sugar.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together302 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,147 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dates
- Provide the sweet, soft base that holds the filling and sugar coating.
- Pecans or english walnuts
- Add a crunchy, slightly bitter contrast to the soft, sweet dates.
- Powdered or granulated sugar
- Forms a sweet outer coating that adds sweetness and a light finish.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, sugar):
- Almondfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against dates, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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