Why it works: Dates and walnut work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Sugar Dates and Cream Walnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the paste
Mix pulverized sugar, egg white, flavoring, and a little cold water until a smooth, pliable paste forms.
Fill and coat
Stone the dates and fill each with a little of the mixture.
Dip the filled dates in granulated sugar.
For walnuts, shape the paste into flat circles, place half a walnut on each, and dip in granulated sugar.
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.
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Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together302 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + datestop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together737 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,037 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pulverized sugar
- Forms the bulk of the paste, giving sweetness and a firm, moldable body.
- Egg white
- Binds the sugar into a smooth, pliable paste that holds its shape.
- Dates
- Provide the soft, chewy fruit base that the sugar paste fills.
- Walnuts
- Add crunch and a nutty flavor to the sugar paste shells.
The step that matters
Mixing the paste to the right consistency. Sugar paste must be smooth and pliable; adding too much cold water makes it runny and sticky, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to fill or shape. Adding water gradually lets you reach a workable texture.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, dates):
- Pecansfits better
- Almondfits better
- Walnutthe original
- Chestnutfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, dates. 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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