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Dessert

Dinner Bon-bons

A sweet snack of nuts, egg white, powdered sugar, sherry, and prunes or dates rolled in granulated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and dates work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Dinner Bon-bons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the peanuts or almonds finely.

  2. Mix the chopped nuts with the beaten egg white and powdered sugar to form a light dough, then add sherry for flavor.

Fill and roll

  1. Pit the prunes or dates and fill the cavities with the nut mixture.

  2. Press the fruit together and roll in granulated sugar.

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. Sherry + datestop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together26 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

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

  3. Peanut + datestop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Binds the chopped nuts and powdered sugar into a light, workable dough.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the nut dough and helps it hold together as a soft paste.
Chopped peanuts or almonds
Provide the nutty filling and body that the dough is built around.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sherry, dates. 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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