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Stuffed Dates

Dates filled with walnut or pecan halves and rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Stuffed Dates

Why it works: Dates and walnut work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones from the dates.

  2. Insert a walnut or pecan half into each date.

  3. Keep a pan of water handy and wet your hands while working.

Roll and coat

  1. Roll the stuffed dates tightly.

  2. Roll the 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the soft, sweet, moist body that holds the filling and sugar coating.
Walnut or pecan halves
Add a crunchy texture and nutty flavour contrasting the soft date.
Granulated sugar
Forms a sweet, dry outer coating that prevents the dates from sticking.

The step that matters

Roll the stuffed dates tightly. Loose rolling lets the stuffed dates open or lose their shape as they sit. Wet hands keep the sticky dates from clinging to your fingers, so each piece forms cleanly and stays closed.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, 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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