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Dessert

Cream Dates

Dates filled with a sweet, creamy mixture made from boiled sugar, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and dates work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cream Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil water, sugar, cream of tartar, and vanilla until it becomes gummy.

  2. Remove from heat and beat briskly until cool and white.

Fill the dates

  1. Stone and wash the dates.

  2. Fill the dates with the 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. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and sets into a soft, sweet, creamy mass as it cools and is beaten.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps prevent large sugar crystals, keeping the cream smooth rather than grainy.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Beat briskly until cool and white. Beating the cooled syrup forces it to crystallize into many fine crystals, which makes the cream opaque and smooth. If it is not beaten enough, or is beaten while still hot, it can stay runny or turn grainy.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, vanilla):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, vanilla. 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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