Name: A Croque-en-bouche Composed of Dates and Preserved Green Almonds
Ingredients: fine dates; preserved green almonds; sugar

Why it works: Dates and almond work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

A Croque-en-bouche Composed of Dates and Preserved Green Almonds

Ingredients

fine dates
preserved green almonds
sugar

Directions

Stick together fine dates and preserved green almonds using sugar boiled to the crack stage.
Decorate with fancy-shaped caramel fruit pastes.

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 + almondtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together217 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together985 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).