Name: Date Pudding
Ingredients: 1 package dates; 1 pinch salt; 1 pint milk

Why it works: Dates and milk work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

1 package dates
1 pinch salt
1 pint milk

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Wash the dates and cut them into small pieces.
Add the dates, salt, and milk to a double boiler.
Cook until thick, about 30 minutes.

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.

Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates: Provide sweetness and body, softening into the pudding as they cook.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy pudding as it cooks.

“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.