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Dessert

Date Pudding

A baked pudding made with dates, walnuts, breadcrumbs, eggs, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Mix the sugar, salt, chopped dates, chopped walnuts, bread crumbs, and baking powder in a bowl.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Grease a baking dish and pour the mixture into it.

  3. Place the dish in a pan of water and bake for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve warm with whipped cream or your preferred sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 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

Eggs
Whipped whites and yolks give the pudding its light, airy structure as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a chewy, moist texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly at the edges.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whipped whites and collapses the air bubbles that lighten the pudding. Folding gently keeps the air trapped so the pudding rises and bakes up soft rather than dense.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, walnut, bread, butter, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, walnut, bread, butter, cream. 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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