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Dessert

Date Pudding I

A baked dessert made with dates, nuts, egg whites, baking powder, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and nuts work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 178 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date Pudding I

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and dry.

  2. Mix the baking powder with the sugar and fold it into the egg whites.

  3. Stone and chop the dates.

  4. Shell and chop the nuts.

  5. Fold the chopped dates and nuts into the sugar and egg mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in an oiled tin at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

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 + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Dates + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the pudding its light, risen structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the mixture rise and stay open-textured.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving a soft, chewy texture.
Nuts
Add fat and bite, contributing texture and a toasty, rich flavour when baked.

The step that matters

Fold the dates and nuts gently into the egg mixture. Folding keeps the air whipped into the egg whites intact. Stirring or beating vigorously would deflate the foam, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light, risen one.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

More date pudding recipes

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