Skip to main content
Main

Date Salad

A salad of dates, lettuce, cream cheese, red pepper, candied cherries, marshmallows, almonds, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Date Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Arrange the pitted dates on a lettuce leaf.

  2. Sprinkle with cream cheese, pressed through a ricer, and add strips of red pepper.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped candied cherries, quartered marshmallows, and shredded almonds in a bowl.

  2. Combine the boiled dressing with the whipped cream and stir into the fruit mixture.

Serve

  1. Heap the mixture on nests of lettuce or in orange or apple cups to serve.

  2. Garnish with additional salad dressing.

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. Lettuce + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

Dates
Provide the sweet, chewy base of the salad.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture.
Candied cherries
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture.
Marshmallows
Soften into a light, sweet, spreadable body in the filling.
Whipped cream
Adds airy volume and a light, creamy texture to the filling.
Boiled dressing
Adds tang and body that binds the filling together.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cream cheese, pepper, almond, 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

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipes