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
Remove the stones from the dates and insert a walnut or pecan half in its place.
Roll the stuffed dates tightly and then roll them in granulated sugar.
Keep a pan of water handy and keep your hands wet while working.
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.
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Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together302 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Walnut + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 sweet, soft, chewy body that holds the filling and sugar coating.
- Walnut halves or pecan halves
- Add crunch and a rich, buttery flavour that contrasts with the soft date.
- Granulated sugar
- Forms a sweet, slightly crisp coating on the sticky outside of the dates.
The step that matters
Keep your hands wet. Dates are sticky and the sugar needs a damp surface to cling. Wet hands help the granulated sugar coat the dates evenly and keep the dates from tearing or sticking to your fingers.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, sugar):
- Almondfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Chestnutfits about as well
- 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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