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Dessert

Date Cakes

A baked cake made with chopped dates, sugar, almonds, egg whites, and buttered pan, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Date Cakes

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).

  2. Butter a pan and sprinkle the bottom with bread crumbs.

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped dates, sugar, chopped almonds, and egg whites until well combined.

  2. Drop a tablespoon of the mixture into the prepared pan for each cake.

  3. Bake until set and lightly 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide sweetness, moisture, and the chewy body of the cake.
Egg whites
Set during baking to give the cakes structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown lightly in the oven.
Chopped almonds
Add texture and a nutty flavor that complements the dates.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Egg whites firm up as they heat, so the cakes need to be baked until set to hold their shape. Pulling them early can leave them soft and collapsed, while over-baking dries the dates and makes the cakes tough.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, egg, butter, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, egg, butter, 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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