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Date Pie

A sweet pie made with dates, milk, flour, egg, and a crust, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Date Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dates

  1. Remove stones from the dates.

  2. Boil dates in water until soft, then drain and mash or sieve them.

Make the custard

  1. Scald 1½ cups of milk.

  2. Mix ½ cup of milk with flour, egg, and salt, then add to the scalded milk.

  3. Boil until thickened, then stir in date pulp and sweeten to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour mixture into the pie crust and bake.

  2. Serve cold with whipped cream and garnish with stuffed 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Dates
Provide the main flavor and sweetness, and the pulp that thickens the filling.
Milk
Forms the body of the custard filling along with the egg.
Egg
Helps set the custard as it cooks, giving it structure.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling becomes smooth and firm.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. The flour and egg need to cook fully while the mixture boils, or the filling stays thin and may taste raw. Stirring keeps the custard smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, sugar, cream. 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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