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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dates, sugar, nuts, baking powder, cracker crumbs, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine chopped dates, sugar, chopped nuts, baking powder, cracker crumbs, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg yolks and whites.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1½ hours until set.

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. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Dates + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and lift, helping the pudding set into a light, tender body.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and stay airy.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving the pudding its soft, chewy texture.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a firmer, more cohesive crumb.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten eggs. Folding preserves the air whipped into the separated yolks and whites. Stirring vigorously would deflate the batter, reducing the lift the baking powder and eggs provide and leaving a denser pudding.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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