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Dessert

Date Crackers

A sweet biscuit made with dates, oats, flour, brown sugar, butter, baking soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and oats share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Date Crackers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the date filling

  1. Boil dates, sugar, and cold water in a pan until dates are soft, then cool.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the brown sugar and butter.

  2. Add rolled oats and flour to the creamed mixture and mix well by hand.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.

  4. Divide dough into 2 parts.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out each part thinly.

  2. Spread the date mixture on one layer.

  3. Place the second layer on top of the filling and cut into squares.

  4. Lay the squares on buttered baking sheets and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Dates + oatstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oats + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Dates + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Cook down into a soft filling that gives the crackers their sweet, moist center.
Rolled oats
Provide chewy structure and a hearty texture to the dough.
Flour
Builds the dough's structure so it can be rolled thinly and cut cleanly.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavor, and helps the crackers brown.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to lighten it and aid browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the date filling until soft. Dates must be fully softened before spreading, because firm pieces will not blend into a smooth filling and can tear the thin dough layers.

Swap the dates

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oats, flour, sugar, butter. 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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