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Dessert

Date Pudding

A baked pudding made with egg whites, sugar, baking powder, walnuts, and dates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and dates 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

Make the batter

  1. Gently fold in the sugar and baking powder.

  2. Add the chopped walnuts and dates, mixing until combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Walnut + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together302 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + datestop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air and give the pudding its light, set structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the pudding rise and become airy.
English walnuts
Add fat, texture and a toasty, nutty flavour to the pudding.
Dates
Add natural sweetness, chewy moisture and a caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the sugar and baking powder. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or deflating the foam makes the pudding dense and reduces its rise.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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