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Dessert

Eggless Date Cookies

Eggless date cookies made with sugar, butter, lard, sour milk, oats, baking soda, flour, dates, and a sweet filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Eggless Date Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, butter, and lard together.

  2. Add sour milk and rolled oats (chopped).

  3. Stir in baking soda and enough flour to make a stiff dough.

  4. Roll out the dough thin and cut into desired shapes.

Make the date filling

  1. Wash and remove stones from dates.

  2. Cook dates with ¾ cup sugar and 1 cup cold water for 20 minutes.

  3. Let the filling cool before using.

Assemble

  1. Pair the cookies with the filling in between.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Oats + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oatstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Milk + oatstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the cookies tender and short.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cookies rise and soften.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and body to the dough.
Dates
Cooked into a sweet, thick filling that gives moisture and flavor.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before using.. A hot filling is runny and soft, so it will soak into the cookies and make them soggy. Cooling lets the dates thicken so the filling holds in place between the cookies.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, oats, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, oats, flour. 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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