ISSUE 73, 20TH-CENTURY CREATIONS, Part 1: The Date-Nut Conjunction
The Date Nut Conjunction
A favorite holiday treat in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was the date nut bar. This was a national treat, driven by women’s magazines, newspaper kitchen columns, and recipes on the back of grocery story boxes of dates. Its popularity depended on the availability of dates in local groceries. The Dromedary Date company began making packaged dates available in the United States in 1910, during the very earliest years of the establishment of an American date industry in California and Arizona. It claimed to source its fruit “on the banks of the Euphrates.” Dromedary’s first motto was “From the Garden of Eden.” [Erie Times (October 30, 1911), 11.
The Dromedary date was a brand name not a variety designation. The date variety employed by the Dromedary company was the Deglet Noor, a variety that was not so soft that it mashed in transport. Yet it was not hard or bready. As the earliest ad copy insisted, “They are not dried and hardened and shriveled as those you see in great open boxes. Most of the original richess, and sweet moisture is retained in Dromedary.” From the first, packaged Dromedary dates were pitted, so the processing entailed some labor cost. 10 cents per package was the initial charge, and advertisements noted that it was “good for pudding.”
The date wasn’t a familiar food. The first advertised culinary creation dates from July 1908, a date nut sundae offered by Bear’s Ice Cream parlor opposite city hall in Phoenix AZ. Both the date nut bar and date nut bread date from a decade later-1917-1918, appearing as novelties created in response to the food austerities of the First World War. One article, republished in 36 regional newspapers, spread the word on date nut bread—its half graham half refined flour mixture was deemed helpful to the war effort.
A word about nuts. The great nut boom did not occur until the 1890s when the physical culturists began promoting nuts as super foods and alternatives to dairy products. Despite desultory attempts to create date groves in Florida and the Lowcountry in the 1800s, it wasn’t until after the USDA plant hunters began flooding the Imperial Valley in California and Arizona with date seeds and cuttings collected in the Middle East shortly after the turn of the twentieth century that the United States had harvests of fruit. The creation of new recipes assisted in the generation of demand.
The date nut bar emerged at the same time but owed its national popularization to the efforts of Presto Cake Flour of Buffalo NY which advertised the recipe in multitudes of small town newspapers for over a decade from 1917. The first form of the bars did not have the sandwich structure most living devotees of the bar expect—goey date nut mixture alternating with layers of baked flour. I suspect the goey center date nut bars emerged in the l1950s, early 60s. Maybe Betty Crocker has the answer.
The Date Nut Bar was a holiday season treat for much of the 20th century, and many groceries did not stock dates during Spring and Summer. It would appear on the shelves in October and remain through March.