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Dessert

Fruit Paste

A spread made from dates, figs, and orange juice used to fill sandwiches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and fig work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Fruit Paste

fills 70 sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash dates and figs in hot water and drain.

  2. Remove seeds from dates and boil them in a little water.

Make the paste

  1. Mash the dates and figs with a fork, adding orange juice until the paste is spreadable.

Use

  1. Use the paste to fill 70 sandwiches.

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. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

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

  2. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Dates + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together151 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
Provide the main sweetness and body of the paste.
Figs
Add sweetness and a soft, thick texture to the paste.
Oranges
Supply juice that loosens the mashed fruit into a spreadable paste.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, fig):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, fig. 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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