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Dessert

Date Cookies

Cookies made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, cinnamon, sour cream, baking soda, dates, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and dates work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 283 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Date Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until light.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and sour cream with the baking soda dissolved in it.

  3. Mix in the cinnamon and chopped dates coated in flour.

  4. Add enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Cut into shapes.

  3. Bake.

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. Cinnamon + datestop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and caramel flavor, and helps the cookies brown.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set during baking.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the dough and reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour cream to release gas, helping the cookies rise.
Dates
Add sweetness, chewy texture and a deep fruity flavor.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to form a stiff dough. Flour builds the structure of the cookies. Too much makes them dry and tough, while too little leaves a sticky dough that is hard to roll and cut cleanly.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, cinnamon, cream, 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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