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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

Prepare and stew

  1. Peel, core, and quarter the apples.

  2. Stew the apples covered until nearly done.

Add dates and sweeten

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

  2. Cover and cook until the dates are tender but not completely dissolved.

Sift and finish

  1. Sift the sauce.

  2. Return it to the heat.

  3. 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 into soft pulp to form the body of the sauce.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and thickening solids, becoming a thick, jam-like texture when cooked down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart apples and dates.

The step that matters

Cook until it becomes a jam or marmalade. Continued cooking after sifting evaporates water and concentrates sugars and pectin, so the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it runny; cooking too long can scorch it on the bottom of the pan.

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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