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Dessert

Date SoufHe

A baked dessert made with dates, nuts, sugar, flour, eggs, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and nuts work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 178 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Date SoufHe

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped dates, baking powder, chopped nuts, sugar, flour, and eggs.

  2. Mix well and pour the batter into long bread pans.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes until set.

Cool and serve

  1. Allow to cool in the oven.

  2. Slice like cake and serve cold 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. Dates + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Set the batter into a light, tender structure as they cook.
Dates
Add sweetness and moisture, giving the soufflé its body.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to help the batter rise.
Flour
Gives the batter enough structure to hold its shape once set.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and a toasty, rich flavour.

The step that matters

Allow to cool in the oven. Letting the soufflé rest in the turned-off oven lets it cool gradually. Moving it straight to room temperature can cause the set structure to collapse or crack, so the gentle cooling helps it hold its shape.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Mixed nutsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dates, sugar, flour, 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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