ISSUE 53-SWEETS & CANDIES-Part 1: Stuffed Dates

The Stuffed Date

The Stuffed Date came to America in the 1850s appearing in French Confectionary shops in eastern cities around November along with fig paste, cordial stars, cream walnuts, sugar plums, and brandy drops.  From the first the stuffed date was a confection of the long holiday season, appearing at Thanksgiving (after the Civil War) and disappearing at 12th night.  Women drove the consumption of candy and confections. An 1877 newspaper quoted a confectioner about the shifts in female preference:

“The American women eat more candy than those of any other nation on earth. They live on it.  But taste in candy, like taste in everything else, changes every little white.  Ten years ago taffy had quite a run. . . . Then, when the gum drops came in, we couldn’t make ‘em fast enough.  We got to putting in brandy and cordials, and that killed it.  Why, sir, at one time the women wouldn’t eat anything but stuffed dates.  Then they ran along for about two years on fig paste. After that there was a great rage for musk drops, but there wasn’t much substance to ‘em, and the flaxseed fashion drove ‘em out.  The caramel appetite began about five years ago.  That and the notion for chocolate creams have held their own longer than we had any idea they would”. “Sweets to the Sweet,: Rhode Island Press (December 8, 1877), p1. 

Fig paste . . . gone.  Flaxseed, yeah its back among the healthy fringe.  Girls eating gum drops . . . not so much.  Musk drops . . . gone with the musk ox.  What endures?  Those chocolate creams, those caramels, and those seasonal stuffed dates. 

So what were stuffed dates?  From the first they appear to have been Deglet Noor dates (what your mom bought as Dromedary Dates in November and December at the grocery store). The pits were removed, the cheap confectioners slicing them open and sticking in some kind of nut, and sprinkling them with granulated white sugar.  The classic extracted the pit without slicing, inserting either an almond or an English walnut, and dusted with confectioner’s sugar.  (See a recipe below). 

By the mid 1880s stuffed dates became a fixture on hotel menus for events.  Throughout the 19th century there were attempts to grow dates in Florida and the coastal islands of the southeastern United States.  But the vast majority of dates used for stuffing were imported.  The Dromedary Date Company became a national concern in 1910. Headquartered in New York City, the Dromedary company imported coconut and dates for resale. It published a recipe book treating dates, from which the recipe for  date nut bars became a fixture.  Southern California became the center of date growing in the United States in the 1920s.  I know because the Shields family was among the leaders of  date growing in America. We saved the meaty Medjool date from extinction.  They procured it between the first and second world wars.  Disease ravaged the original population in North Africa..  So it only survived in the Shields date farm in the Coachella Valley in California. Now it is a world resource.

It is strange that only two dates have presence on the American market, the skinny Dromedaty/Deglet Noor that you saw at Christmas time, and the meaty Medjool that has been the premium date in fine groceries for the past 20 years.  There are a multitude of other varieties—excellent dates—whom even adventurous American diners have never tasted.  The Shields date farm sells six other varieties, from dry bread dates to their famous Medjool.  But via Amazon and ebay you can get dozens more.  Dry bread dates, dark umami dates, refined Halawi and Khadrawi.  But you have to go adventuring. 

What does a stuffed date mean in 2018.  Well the restaurants decided to remake it.  Now instead of mom’s dromedary it is a Medjool, usually wrapped in bacon, and stuffed with cheese, or forcemeat, or even a traditional almond of walnut.

 I haven’t had a good date bar in 20 years.   

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