Name: Date Sandwiches
Ingredients: dates; English walnuts; lemon juice; brown bread

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 Sandwiches

Ingredients

dates
English walnuts
lemon juice
brown bread

Directions

Wash, dry, and remove the pits from the dates.
Mash the dates to a pulp.
Mix in an equal quantity of finely chopped English walnuts.
Moisten the mixture slightly with a little lemon juice.
Spread the mixture smoothly on thinly sliced brown bread.

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.

Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together302 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together714 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 recipes

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