Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert made from prunes, sugar, lemon juice, and stiffly beaten egg whites, baked and served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Prune Whip

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the dried prunes.

  2. Soak the prunes in water until covered.

  3. Cook the prunes in the same water until soft.

  4. Remove the stones from the prunes.

  5. Chop the prunes.

Make the prune mixture

  1. Add the sugar to the prunes.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold the mixture into the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pile the mixture lightly into a buttered baking dish.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C).

  4. Chill the baked mixture.

  5. Serve with soft custard or 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the dish its light, airy structure when baked.
Dried prunes
Provide the main fruit flavour and the body of the pulp once cooked and chopped.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune mixture and helps stabilise the whites when cooked together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.

The step that matters

Fold the mixture into the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the whip dense and flat instead of light after baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes