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Dessert

Spiced Dates

Spiced Dates are dates filled with a mixture of fondant and minced meat, then coated in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spiced Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut open the dates and remove the seeds.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the fondant with the mince meat until well combined and knead into a stiff paste.

  2. Roll the mixture into small pieces the size of a marble.

Fill and coat

  1. Fill each date with the mixture, leaving the open end exposed.

  2. Coat the filled dates in granulated sugar.

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

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

  2. Dates + meattop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dates
Form the sweet, soft shell that holds the filling.
Fondant
Adds sweetness and binds the filling into a stiff, workable paste.
Mince meat
Supplies the spiced flavour that fills the dates.
Granulated sugar
Forms a sweet, dry coating on the outside of the dates.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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