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Dessert

Norwegian Prune Pudding

A pudding made from prunes, sugar, and water, thickened with corn starch and flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and corn work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Norwegian Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak prunes in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Cook prunes until tender.

  3. Remove stones from the prunes.

Make the syrup and thicken

  1. Combine sugar, boiling water, and cinnamon in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Dissolve corn starch in a little cold water.

  4. Add the dissolved corn starch to the prunes and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. 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. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Prunes
Provide the main fruit flavour, sweetness and soft body of the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a set, smooth pudding as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the prunes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the corn starch before adding it. Corn starch clumps if added as dry powder to hot liquid. Mixing it into cold water first lets the granules disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly when heated.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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