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Dessert

Date Bars

A sweet baked bar made with dates, walnuts, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and dates 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 ↓

Date Bars

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix with the sugar.

  2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add to the egg mixture.

  3. Fold in the chopped nuts and dates, then gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan and bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Cut into bars while warm and roll in powdered 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. Walnut + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, and the whipped whites add lift to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderize the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the bars together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bars rise and stay light.
Dates
Add sweetness, moisture, and a chewy texture.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a contrasting nutty texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that lifts the batter as it bakes. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, which leaves the bars dense and heavy.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, walnut, meat, flour. 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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