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Dessert

Date, Ginger and Nut Candy

A candy made of dates stuffed with ginger and nuts, then rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and pecans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date, Ginger and Nut Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove stones from the dates.

  2. Chop equal measures of candy ginger, hickory nuts, pecans, and almonds.

  3. Mix the chopped ingredients with enough fondant to hold together.

Fill and coat

  1. Fill the open space of the dates with the mixture.

  2. Press the dates together and roll them in coarse granulated sugar.

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 + pecanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

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

  3. Pecans + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nuts + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the sweet, soft body that encloses the filling.
Fondant
Binds the chopped ingredients so the filling holds together inside the dates.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour to the filling.
Pecans
Add crunch and a buttery, nutty flavour to the filling.
Almonds
Add crunch and a mild, nutty flavour to the filling.
Candy ginger
Adds spicy, sweet aroma and a chewy bite to the filling.

The step that matters

Enough fondant to hold together. Too little fondant leaves the chopped filling crumbly and likely to fall out of the dates, while too much makes it greasy and overly sweet. Mixing until it just holds together gives a filling that stays put and keeps a balanced texture.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, nuts, pecans, almond, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, nuts, pecans, almond, sugar. 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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