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Dessert

Prune Pie

A pie made with soaked prunes, egg whites, and sugar, baked in a crust and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

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

  1. Soak the prunes overnight.

  2. Cook the prunes and remove the pits.

  3. Beat the prunes until fine and sweeten to taste.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and then fold into the prune mixture.

  2. Line a pie plate with the pie crust and fill it with the prune mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Let cool and 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 body, moisture and fruity flavour of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add air and lightness to the prune filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune filling and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the prune mixture. Stiff egg whites hold air bubbles that give the filling lightness. Stirring vigorously or overmixing deflates them, so the pie bakes up dense instead of airy. Fold gently, just until combined.

“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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