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Dessert

Date Loaf

A sweet loaf made with dates, walnuts, candied fruit, and extracts, baked at low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Date Loaf

Why it works: Peach and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 558 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Date Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, combine the dates, walnuts, egg whites, sugar, cracker crumbs, candied fruit, vanilla, lemon, and almond extracts, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Grease a loaf pan and line it with oiled paper, then pour the mixture into the prepared pan.

  3. Bake slowly for 1 ½ hours or steam for 3 hours.

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.

  1. Peach + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together558 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

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

  5. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide bulk, moisture and natural sweetness that give the loaf its soft, dense body.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter contrast against the sweet fruit.
Egg whites
Bind the chopped ingredients together and help set the loaf's structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a moist, tender crumb.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and lend starch that helps the loaf hold together.

The step that matters

Bake slowly at low heat. Baking at a low temperature sets the egg whites gently, so the loaf cooks through without drying out or becoming tough and cracked on top.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, walnut, egg, sugar, peach, vanilla, almond):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, walnut, egg, sugar, peach, vanilla, almond. 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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