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Dexter Prune Gelatine

A gelatin dessert made with prunes, sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Dexter Prune Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak the prunes overnight.

  2. Cook the prunes in enough water to cover them until tender, then drain.

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Add prune juice and enough water to make 3 cups total to a pot.

  3. Bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice, and gelatine until fully dissolved.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Strain through cheesecloth.

  7. Add the pitted prunes cut into small, uniform pieces.

  8. Serve with whipped cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main flavor and body, and their pieces give the gelatin its texture.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the gelatin and balances the tartness of the prunes and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the gelatine until fully dissolved. Undissolved gelatine stays as grainy specks and will not set evenly. It must be fully dissolved in the hot liquid before removing from heat so the gel holds firmly when chilled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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