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Dessert

Date Pudding

A sweet pudding made from dates, sugar, corn starch, and nut meats, served warm with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and stone the dates.

  2. Cover the dates with 2 cups of cold water and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Add ¾ cup sugar and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of corn starch dissolved in a little water.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in ¾ cup of broken nut meats.

  3. Serve warm with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Dates + corntop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Break down into a soft, sweet pulp that forms the body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cooked dates a richer flavour.
Corn starch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, spoonable consistency as it cools.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour against the soft dates.

The step that matters

Thickening with corn starch. Corn starch must be fully dissolved in water before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens only when heated, so the mixture needs to be kept hot long enough to set properly.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, meat, cream. 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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