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Nut and Date Sandwiches

A sandwich made with dates, walnuts, and buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Nut and Date Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stones from the dates and cut them into small pieces.

  2. Mix the dates with the chopped or ground walnuts.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on buttered bread or serve it alongside the bread.

  2. Apples can be used as a substitute for bread or in combination with it.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide natural sweetness and a sticky, spreadable texture that holds the filling together.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter note that balances the sweet dates.
Bread
Serves as the base that carries the filling; butter adds moisture and richness.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, bread. 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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