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Dessert

Prune Whips

A baked pudding made from soaked prunes, sugar, egg whites, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Whips

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak prunes overnight in just enough water to cover.

  2. In the morning, remove the pits and stew the prunes in the soaking water until soft and thick.

  3. Add sugar to the prunes and let cool.

Make and bake the whip

  1. Mix thoroughly with the beaten egg whites, adding salt and baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake for 15 minutes at 300°F (150°C) until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve cold 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main flavour and, once stewed and thickened, the body of the whip.
Egg whites
Beaten to foam, they give the whip its light, airy structure and help it set.
Sugar
Sweetens the prunes and adds body and browning during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic prunes to lighten the mixture and aid rising.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg whites into the prunes. Egg whites must be beaten to soft peaks and folded in gently, and the prune mixture should be cool. Deflating the foam or adding it to hot fruit makes the whip heavy and less airy when baked.

“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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