Name: Stuffed Dates, Chocolate Dipped
Ingredients: choice dates; preserved ginger or pineapple; chopped nuts; white or chocolate fondant; chocolate

Why it works: Nuts and chocolate work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stuffed Dates, Chocolate Dipped

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the dates open on one side and remove the seeds.
Fill the open space with a strip of preserved ginger or pineapple, or chopped nuts mixed with fondant.
Press the dates to keep the filling inside.
Dip each date one by one in chocolate.

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.

Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together178 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Dates + chocolatetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together86 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Ginger + chocolatetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together378 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ginger + nutstop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).