Name: Prune Souffle
Ingredients: ½ cup sugar; ½ lb prunes; Chopped nuts; Whipped cream

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 Souffle

Ingredients

½ cup sugar
½ lb prunes
Chopped nuts
Whipped cream

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Stew the prunes in as little water as possible until soft.
Drain and pass the prunes through a colander to make a pulp.
Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar.
Fold the prune pulp into the egg whites.
Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.
Set the dish in a pan of hot water and bake at 300°F (150°C) until set.
Serve with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped nuts if desired.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Nuts + creamtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together886 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).