Why it works: Dates and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 985 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Cream Dates
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and fill
Cut open the dates and remove the seeds.
Fill the dates with fondant, shaping them back to their original form.
Coat and finish
Roll the filled dates in granulated sugar.
Sift off the excess sugar before serving.
Flavor the fondant with vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate as desired.
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.
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Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dates
- Provide the sweet, chewy shell that holds the filling.
- Fondant
- Forms a smooth, sweet filling that replaces the pits.
- Granulated sugar
- Coats the outside, adding sweetness and a dry, sugary finish.
The step that matters
Fill the dates with fondant. Dates have thin skins, so overfilling or reshaping roughly can split them. Filling gently and shaping them back to their original form keeps the filling enclosed and the dates intact.
“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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