Why it works: Dates and lemon work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 213 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Date Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the dates
Boil chopped dates with water until very soft.
Rinse through a sieve to remove the stones.
Thin the mixture slightly with hot water.
Finish the sauce
Add lemon juice and boil for a moment longer.
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 + lemontop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together213 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Dates
- Provide the sweetness and, once softened and broken down, the thick body of the sauce.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavour of the dates.
The step that matters
Boil the dates until very soft. Heat softens the date flesh and breaks down its fibres and pectin. If the dates are not soft enough, the sieved sauce stays gritty and thick in an uneven way.
“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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