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Dessert

Stuffed Date Pudding

A baked pudding made with dates, nuts, custard, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Stuffed Date Pudding

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

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

  2. Remove the seeds from the dates and stuff them with chopped nuts.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, and vanilla.

  2. Pour the custard mixture into a baking dish and bake for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove from the oven and cover the top with the stuffed dates.

Top with meringue and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the stuffed dates and return to the oven to brown the meringue.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Dates + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Dates
Provide the sweet, chewy filling that sits in the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk custard as they set during baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that bakes around the dates.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold stiff peaks.
Cornstarch
Helps thicken the custard so it sets as it bakes.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff without overbeating, since they become grainy and deflate. Adding the sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and hold its shape on top of the custard while it browns.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, milk, egg, vanilla, 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.

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