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Prune Sandwich

A sandwich made with prunes, pecan nuts, sugar, salt, butter, lemon juice, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and wheat work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Prune Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak large prunes overnight.

  2. Boil prunes with a little sugar until soft.

  3. Remove stones from prunes.

Make the filling

  1. Grind prunes and an equal quantity of pecan nuts together.

  2. Mix the ground mixture with a pinch of salt, a little butter, and lemon juice until smooth.

Assemble

  1. Spread the mixture on thin slices of whole wheat or white bread.

  2. Trim the sandwiches into attractive shapes.

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. Nuts + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together585 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main sweet, soft filling base and moisture once cooked and mashed.
Pecan nuts
Add body, texture and a rich, slightly crunchy contrast to the smooth filling.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the filling smoother and richer in mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the prunes.

The step that matters

Boil prunes until soft. Prunes must be fully softened before grinding; firm prunes stay gritty and will not blend into a smooth filling that spreads evenly on thin bread.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon, wheat. 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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