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Dessert

Date Creams

A sweet treat made by filling dates with a stiffened egg white and sugar mixture, optionally topped with nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Date Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Break the egg white.

  2. Add the water to the bowl.

  3. Stir in confectioners’ sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold.

  4. Flavor the mixture with vanilla.

Fill and coat the dates

  1. Seed the dates.

  2. Fill the cavity of the dates with the cream.

  3. Allow the cream to protrude.

  4. Optionally, place a little cream on top of the dates.

  5. Dry on oiled paper.

  6. Place a nut in the cavity of the date.

  7. Roll the date in cream.

  8. Cover with a thick layer of cream.

  9. Let the date creams set for twelve hours.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whips and binds the sugar into a stiff, moldable cream structure.
Confectioners’ sugar
Sweetens and stiffens the cream so it holds its shape around the dates.
Shapely dates
Serve as the sweet, chewy base that the cream is molded onto and around.

The step that matters

Stir in confectioners’ sugar until the mixture is stiff enough to mold. The cream must be stiff enough to hold shape without sliding off the dates. Adding sugar gradually and stopping at a moldable texture prevents a runny cream that will not set around the fruit.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, vanilla, dates):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, dates. 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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