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Dessert

Date Creams

A sweet filling made from dates, sugar, milk, and egg yolks, cooked into a creamy mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and dates work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Combine the sugar and milk in an enamelled saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  4. Place the saucepan in a dish of cold water.

  5. Add the egg yolks and essence, stirring constantly until creamy.

Fill the dates

  1. Select glossy dates.

  2. Cut a slit in each date.

  3. Remove the stone and skin from each date.

  4. Fill the dates with the cream mixture.

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. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Crystal sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it dissolves and cooks, body to the cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sugar dissolves in and the cream sets from.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Removing the pan from heat and cooling it in cold water, while stirring constantly, lets the yolks thicken the cream gently and evenly.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg. 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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