Name: Stuffed Dates
Ingredients: dates; peanuts; powdered sugar

Why it works: Dates and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 985 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Dates

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

dates
peanuts
powdered sugar

Directions

Remove the stone from each date.
Chop the peanuts and fill each date with them.
Sprinkle the filled dates with 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together985 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Dates + peanuttop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Peanut + sugartop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,545 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).