Name: Chocolate Dates
Ingredients: dates; chocolate; chopped hickory nuts

Why it works: Chocolate and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Chocolate Dates

Ingredients

dates
chocolate
chopped hickory nuts

Directions

Remove the seeds from the dates.
If desired, stuff the dates with chopped hickory nuts.
Press the dates firmly together.
Coat the stuffed dates with chocolate.

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.

Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together178 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Dates + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together86 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).