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Dessert

Delicious Prune Pie

A pie with a pastry crust filled with stewed prunes, sugar, fruit juice, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Delicious Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Mix flour and butter.

  2. Add cold water as needed.

  3. Roll out the crust.

  4. Dot the crust with 1 tablespoon of butter.

  5. Fold the crust.

  6. Chill the crust in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Make the filling and assemble

  1. Scald the prunes.

  2. Boil the prunes with sugar and fruit juice until tender.

  3. Remove the pits from the prunes.

  4. Mix in chocolate and additional juice.

  5. Fill the crust with the prune mixture.

  6. Cover with narrow strips of dough.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the crust its structure.
Butter
Creates flaky layers in the crust as it melts and steams during baking.
Prunes
Provide the main body, sweetness and moisture of the filling as they soften.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune filling and helps it turn glossy and thick.
Fruit juice
Adds moisture and fruity sweetness, helping the prunes cook until tender.
Chocolate
Adds richness and a deep, slightly bitter flavor to the prune filling.

The step that matters

Chill the crust in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Chilling firms the butter before baking. Cold fat creates separate flaky layers, while warm dough can soften, spread and bake up tough.

“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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