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Dessert

Date Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

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 until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the powdered sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Add the chopped dates and walnuts to the yolk mixture.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Sift in the flour and baking powder, and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking tin and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 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 trapped by beating give the pudding its light, airy structure as it sets.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a cake-like body rather than staying loose.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the pudding rise and become lighter in texture.
Dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness, keeping the baked pudding soft and chewy.
Walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the egg yolks for a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are stiff. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the pudding bakes denser and less light.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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