Skip to main content
Dessert

Date Whip

A sweet dessert made from dates, sugar, and egg whites, baked into a smooth, fluffy mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Dates and sugar 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 Whip

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the date base

  1. Pound the stoned dates until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the dates and sugar, and cook until soft.

  3. Sift the mixture to remove any lumps.

Whip and bake

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Dates + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Stoned dates
Provide the main body, sweetness and moisture of the whip once cooked and pounded smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked dates soften into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the mixture and give it an airy, set structure when baked.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the beaten whites intact. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the whip bakes up denser and less light.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. 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.

You might also like

Stuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes