Why it works: Sugar and dates work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 985 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Date Cream Bars
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar syrup
In a saucepan, combine sugar and water. Boil without stirring until it hardens when dropped in cold water.
Make the candy and shape
Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.
Slowly pour the hot sugar mixture over the beaten egg whites, stirring constantly until stiff enough to mold.
Fold in the chopped dates.
Shape the mixture into bars and roll in powdered sugar.
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.
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Sugar + datestop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together985 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + datestop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together737 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the candy a light, airy structure.
- Granulated sugar
- Boiled with water into a syrup that sets firm as it cools, giving the bars their body and sweetness.
- Dates
- Add natural sweetness, chewy texture and flavour to the mixture.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar syrup. The syrup must reach the hard-crack stage, shown by it hardening in cold water. Undercooked syrup leaves the bars soft and sticky, while overcooked syrup makes them brittle. Stirring can cause crystals to form, so the syrup is boiled without stirring.
Swap the dates
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Lemonfits better
- Datesthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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