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 ↓
Stuffed Dates
Ingredients
Directions
Carefully slit the dates to remove the stones.
Cut the walnut meats into strips the size of the date stones.
Slip the walnut strips into the dates and press the edges together.
Roll the stuffed dates in confectioners' sugar.
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.
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Dates + walnuttop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together302 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,147 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
- Dates
- Provide the soft, sweet base that the walnut filling sits inside.
- English walnuts
- Add crunch and a mildly bitter, nutty flavor that balances the sweet dates.
- Confectioners' sugar
- Forms a dry, sweet coating that keeps the sticky dates from clumping.
The step that matters
Slipping the walnut strips into the dates. Dates are sticky and can tear when slit, so opening them gently keeps the shape intact and lets the filling sit snugly. Walnut strips sized to the pit space stay in place and do not fall out when the edges are pressed together.
Swap the walnut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dates, sugar):
- Almondfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Chestnutfits about as well
- Walnutthe original
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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