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 until soft, then remove the pits and chop them.
Make the pudding
In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Fold the chopped prunes and sugar into the beaten egg whites.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.
Serve
Serve warm or cold with whipped 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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Sugar + eggtop 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 main fruit flavour, sweetness and a soft, moist body to the pudding.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air and give the pudding its light, set structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.
The step that matters
Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks so they trap air. Under-whipped whites collapse during folding and baking, leaving a dense pudding, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and lose their ability to blend smoothly.
“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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