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Dessert

Date Nut Filling

A sweet filling made from dates, nuts, corn syrup, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Date Nut Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Place the corn syrup in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Cream together the flour, butter, and sugar.

  3. Add the creamed mixture to the syrup.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Add the dates and beat the mixture for one minute.

  7. Set the mixture aside to cool.

  8. Add the chopped nuts.

Serve

  1. Spread the filling between cake layers or on Graham crackers, plain crackers, or homemade cookies.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

White corn syrup
Provides sweetness and a smooth, syrupy body that keeps the filling soft.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it combines with the butter and sugar.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Dates
Add natural sweetness, body, and chewy texture to the filling.
Nut meats
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor contrast to the soft filling.

The step that matters

Boil for exactly 2 minutes. Boiling the flour-butter-sugar mixture with the syrup activates the starch so the filling thickens. Boiling too briefly leaves it thin, while boiling too long can make it stiff and sugary as it cools.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, syrup, sugar, flour, butter, meat):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, syrup, sugar, flour, butter, meat. 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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