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Date Sandwiches

A sandwich made with dates, walnuts, cream, and egg white, served on buttered whole wheat bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Date Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix dates, walnut meats, and cream in a bowl.

  2. Cut whole wheat bread into rounds.

Assemble

  1. Spread butter on each round.

  2. Top with the date mixture.

  3. Place a walnut meat dipped in egg white on top of each sandwich.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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.

  1. Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the sweet, sticky body that makes up most of the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture so the date mixture holds together and spreads easily.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the bread from soaking up the filling.
Egg white
Acts as a light glue so the walnut piece stays fixed on top.
English walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft dates.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, meat, cream, wheat, bread, butter, egg):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, meat, cream, wheat, bread, butter, egg. 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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