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Dessert

Woodland Cream Dates

Dates stuffed with ground hickory or pecan nuts, dipped in fondant and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and chocolate 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 ↓

Woodland Cream Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Open the dates and remove the seeds.

  2. Grind the hickory nuts or pecan meats.

  3. Stuff the dates with the ground nuts and close them.

Coat and finish

  1. Dip the stuffed dates in fondant.

  2. Also dip the dates in 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.

  1. Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dates + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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 body that holds the nut filling.
Hickory nuts or pecan meats
Add a crunchy, rich filling that contrasts with the soft dates.
Fondant
Forms a sweet, smooth outer coating over the stuffed dates.
Chocolate
Adds a glossy, bittersweet coating and rich flavor.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nuts, chocolate):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Datesthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against nuts, chocolate. 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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