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Date or Fig Sandwiches

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Date or Fig Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steam the fruit for 15 minutes after scalding with boiling water.

  2. Grind the fruit into a pulp or place them whole on slices of bread spread with nut butter.

  3. Layer the sandwiches closely in a baking dish and moisten with boiling water.

  4. Bake until heated through and serve with cream, grape wine, or a lemon or orange sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Grape + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).

  4. Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Dates + grapetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cream, grape, wine, lemon):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, grape, wine, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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