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Sauce

Date Sauce

A sauce made by stewing apples and dates with sugar and hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and dates work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Date Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Stew the apples covered until nearly done.

  3. Uncover and add an equal quantity of dates and a little sugar to taste.

  4. Cover and cook until the dates are tender, but not until they break apart.

  5. If overcooked, sift the sauce, return it to the heat, and cook until it becomes a jam or marmalade.

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. Apple + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Break down during stewing to form the body of the sauce.
Dates
Add sweetness and thickening body as they soften into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until the dates are tender, but not until they break apart. Dates that are cooked too long lose their shape and turn the sauce overly thick and dense, pushing it toward a jam-like texture. Stopping when they are just tender keeps the sauce smooth and spoonable.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, 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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