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Dessert

Opera Dates

Dates stuffed with opera cream, set in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Opera Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dates

  1. Remove the seeds from the dates.

  2. Stuff each date with opera cream.

  3. Let the stuffed dates set for 2 hours.

Crystallize and finish

  1. Prepare a sugar syrup at 33° Brix (about 1.5 times the weight of water in sugar).

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the dates and let them set for 5 hours.

  3. Drain off any excess syrup.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Dates + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 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 the sweet, soft fruit base that holds the filling and the sugar coating.
Sugar
Forms a crystallized sugar shell on the dates as the hot syrup cools and sets.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the dates. The syrup must be at the right concentration (33° Brix) to crystallize properly when it cools. If it is too dilute, the coating stays sticky; too concentrated or cooled unevenly, it can crystallize unevenly or grainy.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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