Skip to main content
Salad

Date and Cheese Salad

A salad of dates stuffed with cream cheese, served on lettuce with a mayonnaise and whipped cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream cheese and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,087 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Date and Cheese Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dates and open one side to remove the stone.

  2. Fill the dates with cream cheese.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve the filled dates on a bed of lettuce.

  2. Mix mayonnaise with one-third as much whipped cream and drizzle over the salad.

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. Cream cheese + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Dates + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cream cheese + lettucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Dates + cream cheesetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the sweet, chewy base that holds the filling.
Cream cheese
Adds creamy richness and a mild tang that contrasts the dates' sweetness.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess to the dressing, carrying a smooth, rich texture over the salad.
Whipped cream
Lightens the mayonnaise dressing, adding air for a softer, less heavy texture.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream cheese, lettuce, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream cheese, lettuce, cream. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes