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Date Sandwiches

A sandwich made with date pulp, walnuts, and sweet cream or butter on whole wheat bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Date Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix equal amounts of date pulp and finely chopped walnuts.

  2. Moisten the mixture slightly with sweet cream or soft butter.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture smoothly on two slices of whole wheat bread.

  2. Top with the remaining slices of bread and press lightly to hold together.

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. Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Date + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together322 recipes

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

  3. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Date pulp
Provides sweetness and a soft, spreadable body that holds the filling together.
English walnut meats
Add crunch and a slightly bitter, nutty flavor that balances the sweet date pulp.
Sweet cream or soft butter
Adds moisture and richness so the filling spreads smoothly and does not dry out the bread.

Swap the date

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, meat, cream, wheat, bread):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, meat, cream, wheat, bread. 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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