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Dessert

Date Fudge

A sweet fudge made with dates, brown sugar, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Date Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the brown sugar in a kettle on the back of the stove and let it scorch slightly.

  2. Add the water without stirring and cook slowly until it threads when dropped from a spoon.

  3. Add the butter and beat until it begins to harden.

  4. Quickly stir in the seeded dates.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Butter + datestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Light brown sugar
Provides sweetness and caramel flavour as it cooks and scorches slightly.
Seeded dates
Provide body, sweetness and texture to the finished fudge.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the fudge a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar and water to the threading stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct concentration before beating. Cooking slowly and without stirring prevents crystallisation, and stopping at the threading stage sets the texture once it cools and firms.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter. 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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