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Dessert

Date and Walnut Bars

A sweet bar made with dates, walnuts, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Date and Walnut Bars

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Grind the dates and walnuts using a meat grinder.

  2. Mix the ground dates and walnuts with the sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Sift the baking powder and flour together, then add the sifted mixture to the batter and beat thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a thin sheet.

  2. Bake until set.

  3. Allow to cool.

  4. Cut into bars.

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 + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + datestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped by folding give the bars lift, while yolks add richness and binding to the batter.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a sliceable sheet rather than staying loose.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and turn lighter in texture as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown lightly and stay moist as it bakes.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a soft, chewy moisture to the bars.
Walnuts
Add a crunchy texture and a toasty, nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft dates.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks the air out, leaving dense bars, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, dates):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Mixed nutsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, 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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