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Dessert

Date Tort

A baked date and walnut cake flavored with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Date Tort

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, chopped walnuts, cloves, baking powder, chopped dates, egg yolks, and allspice.

  2. Beat the egg whites slightly and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Pour the batter into a springform pan.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and golden.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites provide structure and lift as the torte sets when baked.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the torte.
English walnuts
Add texture and body through their chopped pieces in the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the torte and helps it brown as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the torte rise and become light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air when beaten, and gentle folding keeps that air in the batter. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser torte with less rise.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, walnut, clove, egg, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, walnut, clove, egg, allspice. 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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