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Baking

Date Rocks

A sweet baked treat made with butter, brown sugar, dates, walnuts, spices, baking soda, water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Date Rocks

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 the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

  3. Beat in the eggs, then add the chopped dates and walnuts.

  4. Mix in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda dissolved in water.

  5. Gradually add flour to form a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake until 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies tender and rich.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and brown.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.. The batter is stiff, so spoonfuls should be spaced and shaped evenly. Uneven mounds bake unevenly, and flat spreading can leave some pieces thin and others thick.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, walnut, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, walnut, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour. 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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