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Dessert

Date Pudding

A baked dessert made with dates, nuts, eggs, flour, baking powder, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and nuts work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 178 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the flour, baking powder, and sugar.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.

  3. Add the chopped dates and nuts, and mix until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Serve warm with whipped cream.

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 + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Dates + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure to the batter.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, becoming soft and chewy when baked.
Nuts
Add crunch and texture that contrasts with the soft batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that expands in the oven to lift the pudding. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Mixed nutsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

More date pudding recipes

Steamed 8 See all 100 →

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