Mazafati date
Phoenix dactylifera · Fruit
Top 10 pairings
The Mazafati is Iran's great soft, dark, wet date — a deep brown-to-black, glossy, almost fudgy fruit so moist and tender it is sold and eaten fresh and chilled rather than dried. Grown above all around the city of Bam in the south-east, it is plump and oval with a thin skin and a plush, syrup-dark flesh that melts on the tongue, intensely sweet with a deep caramel-and-toffee richness and a faint cocoa-malty undertone. Where a Deglet Noor is semi-dry and chips away in chewy flakes, the Mazafati is at the opposite extreme — a high-moisture rutab-stage date eaten soft, fresh and cool, and prized in Iran as a luxury of the date table.
Picking a good onedrag
Crisp, yellow, astringentHard, sugared or fermenting
GlossyPeak eatingEat as they are, stuffed with almond, walnut or blue cheese.
SkinGlossy amber-brown, skin whole
SqueezeGives right through, springs back
SmellHoney, brown sugar, some caramel
Stem endSmall dry cap still tight in place
These cues are Date's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
92%
Edible part
24 g flesh · one hard pit, 8% of it
26 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
A domestic fridge holds it about 6× longer than the counter.
70-75%
Humidity
Sealed, not vented
Airflow