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Date and Walnut

A sandwich made with dates, walnuts, and cream spread between buttered whole wheat bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Date and Walnut

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the dates and walnuts finely.

  2. Mix the chopped dates and walnuts with the cream.

  3. Spread the mixture between the buttered slices of whole wheat bread.

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 + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Dates + wheattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture to the filling.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a mild, slightly bitter nutty flavour that contrasts the sweet dates.
Cream
Binds the chopped dates and walnuts into a spreadable filling and adds richness.
Whole wheat bread
Provides the sturdy base that holds the filling between its buttered slices.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, cream, wheat, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, cream, wheat, bread. 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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