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Dessert

Prune Pie

A baked pie with a sweet prune filling and a frothy egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Prune Pie

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 crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Prepare and bake the pie crust in a pie tin.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, egg yolks, flour, vanilla, mashed prunes, water, and butter.

  2. Boil the mixture until thick, then pour it into the baked pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy, then mix in the sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the filled pie crust and brown in the oven.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the prune filling as they set during boiling, giving it body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut instead of running.
Egg whites
Beaten and spread on top, they form a light meringue that browns in the oven.
Cooked mashed prunes
Provide the main flavor, sweetness, and moisture of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, dissolved into the beaten whites, helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until thick. The starch in the flour and the egg yolks must be cooked fully to thicken the filling. If it is under-cooked, the filling stays runny and soaks into the crust; the thickening is needed before the custard-like layer is set.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, vanilla, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, vanilla, butter. 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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