Name: Stuffed Dates
Ingredients: 12 dates; ½ cup peanuts, walnuts, or hickory nuts (or a mix); ¼ cup peanut butter (optional); ¼ cup chopped nuts (for rolling); ¼ cup shredded coconut (for rolling); 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (for rolling); 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon (for rolling)

Why it works: Peanut and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Stuffed Dates

Ingredients

12 dates
½ cup peanuts, walnuts, or hickory nuts (or a mix)
¼ cup peanut butter (optional)
¼ cup chopped nuts (for rolling)
¼ cup shredded coconut (for rolling)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (for rolling)
1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon (for rolling)

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

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C) if you plan to toast the nuts.
Remove the stones from the dates.

Stuff and coat

Fill each date with your choice of nuts or peanut butter. Press the dates into shape.
Roll the stuffed dates in a mixture of chopped nuts, shredded coconut, cocoa powder, and powdered cinnamon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Peanut + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together433 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Peanut + nutstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together81 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together283 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Dates + coconuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together76 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Coconut + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together979 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates: Provide the sweet, soft base that holds the filling and coating together.
Peanut butter: Adds richness and fat to the filling, making it creamy and smooth.
Cocoa powder: Adds bitter, deep chocolate flavour to the outside coating.

Swap the peanut

The recipe marks peanut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, butter, nuts, coconut, cocoa powder, cinnamon):

Almondfits better
Pecansfits better
Walnutfits better
Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, butter, nuts, coconut, cocoa powder, cinnamon. 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.