Cocktails with Dates
Dates are the edible fruit of the date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, a single-seeded fruit borne in large clusters.
Taste profile
Intensely sweet with a caramel, dried-fruit depth; the flesh is dense and sticky rather than juicy.
How it's used
A single pitted date, or a few, adds sweetness and caramel aroma; the stone must be removed first. Because the sugar-rich flesh does not dissolve, it is muddled or infused rather than stirred in, and it leaves cloudiness and sediment in the glass. Whole pitted fruit can also perch on a pick as a garnish.
Substitutes for Dates
Sweetness alone can be matched with a syrup, but the caramel, date-specific aroma and sticky body cannot be reproduced from a plain sweetener; another concentrated dark dried fruit such as fig or raisin comes closest, and only approximately.
Description
Harvested from the date palm and sold either as soft fresh fruit or, very commonly, as naturally dried or semi-dried fruit whose sugars are concentrated and flesh darkened by drying, each date is a fleshy, oblong fruit around a single hard, elongated stone. Many cultivars are traded, differing in size, moisture and texture — among them large, soft, moist types and firmer, semi-dry ones.
Origin
The date palm was domesticated in the arid Middle East / Fertile Crescent region and has been cultivated there since antiquity.
