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Dessert

Frozen Date Pudding

A chilled custard made with dates, figs, eggs, milk, sugar, walnuts, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and walnut work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Frozen Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs slightly in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar and salt, stirring constantly while gradually adding the milk.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler, stirring until it thickens and coats the spoon.

  4. Flavor the custard to taste and let it cool.

Add fruit and freeze

  1. Once cool, fold in the chopped dates or figs and walnuts.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold or freezer, pack it in ice and salt, and let it stand for several 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.

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. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dates + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give the pudding a rich, set body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen pudding.
Dates or figs
Add sweetness, chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavor.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty contrast to the soft custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard in a double boiler. Eggs thicken gently at moderate heat. If the heat is too high or stirring stops, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard that coats the spoon.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, dates, egg, milk):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, dates, egg, milk. 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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