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Stuffed Dates

Dates filled with pecans or walnuts and rolled in confectioner's sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Stuffed Dates

Why it works: Dates and pecans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Dates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the dates in a colander in a warm place.

  2. Remove the stones from the dates.

Stuff and coat

  1. Insert half a pecan or one fourth of an English walnut into each date.

  2. Roll the stuffed dates in confectioner's sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + pecanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Pecans + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide the sweet, chewy base that holds the nut filling.
Pecans or english walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter contrast to the soft dates.
Confectioner's sugar
Forms a thin, sweet coating that adds a soft, dry finish to the outside.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Pecansthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Mixed nutsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, sugar. 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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