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 ↓
Prune Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the prunes
Boil the prunes, then stone and cut each into three pieces.
Make the meringue
Beat the egg whites to stiff froth.
Gradually beat in the sugar and cream of tartar.
Fold in the prunes.
Bake and serve
Brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven and then chill in the refrigerator.
Serve with cream.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 fruit body and sweet, moist flavour of the pudding.
- Egg whites
- Whip into a foam that gives the pudding its light, airy structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the foam and helps stabilise the whipped egg white.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the egg whites, stabilising the foam so it holds its volume.
The step that matters
Gradually beat in the sugar and cream of tartar. Adding sugar slowly lets it dissolve into the foam, keeping the whites glossy and stable. Adding it all at once can deflate the foam and weaken the structure the pudding depends on.
“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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