Why it works: Dates and sugar work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 985 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Date Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Stone and chop the dates using a meat chopper.
Make the candy
In a saucepan, combine the sugar and a little water, then boil until it forms long threads.
Remove from heat and stir in the chopped dates until it begins to harden.
Pour the mixture onto buttered tins and let it cool.
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.
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Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dates
- Provide the bulk, sweetness and chewy body of the candy.
- Sugar
- Boiled to a thread stage, it sets into the firm structure of the candy.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to long threads. Sugar must reach the thread stage so that, as it cools, it sets firm rather than staying sticky. Undercooked sugar leaves the candy soft and tacky.
“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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