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Bread

Date Bread

A sweet bread made with dates, baking soda, brown sugar, egg, butter, vanilla, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Date Bread

Why it works: Dates and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Date Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, stone, and cut dates into small pieces.

  2. Add baking soda and boiling water; mix well and let cool slightly.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in brown sugar, beaten egg, butter, and vanilla.

  2. Add flour sifted with salt and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour into a greased baking pan and bake at 325°F to 350°F for 1 hour.

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.

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.

  1. Dates + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Provide sweetness, moisture, and the bulk of the bread's flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic dates to lift and lighten the batter as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the loaf structure as it sets.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the boiling water with the dates. Baking soda needs moisture and heat to react with the dates' acidity and release gas. Mixing it well and letting the mixture cool slightly lets the reaction start before the flour goes in, so the loaf rises evenly rather than unevenly.

Swap the dates

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

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

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