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Dessert

Date Tart

A baked tart of dates, almonds, butter, sugar, egg whites, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and dates work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the almonds finely and cut the dates into small pieces.

  2. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in the sugar, almonds, and dates lightly.

  2. Butter a shallow pie dish and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

  3. Pour in the mixture and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 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. Almond + datestop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they give the tart its light, airy structure.
Almonds
Provide the main body and a nutty texture to the tart.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the tart.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set and brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the sugar, almonds, and dates lightly. Whipped egg white foam is fragile. Heavy or prolonged stirring knocks out the air bubbles, so the tart bakes up dense rather than light.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, butter, sugar, egg. 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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