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Date Squares
1 C flour 1 T butter 2 eggs, beaten well 1 T hot water 2 level t baking powder 1/2 C nutmeats 1 lb. dates Spread thin on tin. Bake 25 minutes in moderate oven. Let cool in tin-cut in strips. Roll in sugar. 1 lb. dates 2/3 C sugar 1 C chopped nuts 1/2 C sifted flour Mrs. A. W. Lindroth. 1 t baking powder 2 eggs 1 t vanilla
As printed, this entry has run two versions of the same bar together — one list with butter and hot water, a second with sugar and vanilla — and no sugar at all in the first. Pick one list and work from it; the second, fuller one is the more reliable of the two.
- Which list to useThe second set (1 lb dates, 2/3 C sugar, 1 C chopped nuts, 1/2 C sifted flour, 1 t baking powder, 2 eggs, 1 t vanilla) is a complete, workable date bar. The first set has flour and leavening but no sweetener, which is almost certainly a typesetting casualty.
- Moderate ovenAround 350-375F. Twenty-five minutes is right for a thin sheet; the bars should be set and lightly browned at the edges but still soft in the middle.
- "Spread thin on tin"Any shallow rectangular pan, greased, gives the thin layer intended; a smaller, deeper pan will need longer than the stated 25 minutes.
- A pound of datesThat is roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups pitted and chopped, and it is a great deal of fruit for half a cup of flour: the batter is essentially a binder. Buy pitted dates; the cook working from this book may well have been pitting them by hand.
- NutmeatsSimply shelled nuts, chopped. Walnuts or pecans are the period default.
- Cool before cuttingThe instruction to let it cool in the tin matters. Warm, these bars tear; cold, they cut cleanly into strips.
- Rolling in sugarProbably granulated, though confectioners' sugar clings better to a sticky date surface. Do it just before serving, since the sugar dissolves into the fruit on standing.
- YieldRoughly two dozen small bars, depending on the pan and how narrowly they are cut.
Date bars turn up frequently in American community cookbooks from roughly the 1910s onward. Commercial date growing in California's Coachella Valley, planted from offshoots imported from the Middle East in the first years of the century, began shipping in quantity in this period, alongside imported pressed dates, and a boxed supply in the pantry made a rich, fruit-heavy bar with almost no flour and no creaming easy to produce -- useful when flour was being economised and when a sweet had to travel well and cut into many small pieces. Community cookbooks of this kind were typically compiled from contributors' handwritten cards and set in type by local printers, which may well be how a single page ends up carrying two overlapping ingredient lists under one name and one signature.