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Almond Paste Dates

Dates stuffed with almond paste and walnut pieces, rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Paste Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dates

  1. Open the dates and remove the seeds, laying them flat.

Make the filling

  1. Knead the dipping cream, almond paste, and walnut pieces together to form a stiff paste.

Fill and finish

  1. Take small pieces of the paste and fill each date, then close them so the cream is visible on one side.

  2. Roll the filled dates in granulated sugar and sift off the excess sugar.

  3. Optionally, dip the dates in fondant or chocolate, then cut in half or leave whole.

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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 encloses the filling.
Almond paste
Adds dense sweetness and a rich almond flavour to the filling.
Dipping cream
Adds fat and moisture, helping the filling stay soft and smooth.
English walnut pieces
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the stiff filling.

The step that matters

Kneading the filling to a stiff paste. If the cream, almond paste and walnuts are not fully combined, the filling can be uneven or crumbly and may not hold its shape inside the dates.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, almond, walnut, 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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