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Dessert

Date Pie

A sweet pie made from dates, milk, and salt, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and milk work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Pie

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the filling

  1. Place dates in a saucepan with a small amount of milk over low heat.

  2. Cook until the dates are soft.

  3. Pass the cooked dates through a colander.

  4. Combine the strained dates with the remaining milk and a pinch of salt.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, about 30-40 minutes.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the sweetness and bulk of the filling, and break down into a smooth purée when softened.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the dates, and sets with gentle heat to give the filling its body.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Milk-based fillings set through gentle heat as proteins coagulate. Underbaking leaves a runny center, while overbaking can make the custard weep or turn grainy.

“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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