Name: Date Pudding Baked
Ingredients: ½ pound dates; juice of 1 lemon; 6 ounces butter; 6 eggs; ⅔ cup brandy; ¼ pound sugar; 2 ounces bread crumbs

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Date Pudding Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Stone and pound the dates to a paste.
Add lemon juice, butter, eggs, brandy, sugar, and bread crumbs; mix well.
Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

Bake for 20 minutes.
Serve warm.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Dates + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together100 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates: Provide the sweet, moist paste that forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs: Set during baking to give the pudding structure and a tender, custard-like crumb.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a soft, moist texture.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and add bulk, helping the pudding hold its shape.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface.
Brandy: Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Apricotfits better
Lemonthe original

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