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Dessert

Gateau of Prunes

A gelatin-based cake made with prunes, claret, lemon, and sugar, layered with jelly and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Gateau of Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and soak them in ½ cup of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the stones and simmer or steam the prunes until soft.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatin and sugar in ½ cup of water.

  2. Add the lemon juice and claret.

  3. Strain the mixture into the prune juice.

  4. Add enough carmine to achieve a nice color.

Layer and set

  1. Put some of the jelly in the bottom of a border mold.

  2. When the jelly has set, arrange some prunes on top.

  3. Cover the prunes with jelly.

  4. Let the layer firm, then repeat the layers until the mold is full.

  5. Blanched prune kernels can be added for improvement.

Serve

  1. Turn the cake out of the mold.

  2. Serve with whipped cream in the center.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Instant powdered gelatine
Sets the claret and prune juice into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Prunes
Provide the main flavor and soft, chewy texture within the jelly.
Claret
Adds wine flavor and acidity to the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of lemon and claret.

The step that matters

Let each layer set before adding the next. Gelatine sets as it cools, so pouring new jelly onto a layer that is not yet firm causes the layers to mix and blur. Each layer needs to be fully firm before the prunes or the next jelly go on top.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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