Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from soaked prunes, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, and gelatin, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prune Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash prunes well, cover them with water, and soak overnight.

  2. Boil the prunes in the same water until soft enough to remove the pits.

  3. Line a mold with the prunes.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the juice from the prunes, sugar, lemon juice and rind, and cinnamon in a pot and boil together.

  2. Dissolve gelatin in ½ cup water and pour into the boiling syrup; strain into the mold.

  3. Let it cool completely, then turn out and serve 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,510 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 flavour and body, and their juice gives the jelly its colour and sweetness.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid so the jelly holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and prunes.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright aroma that cut through the sweetness of the prunes.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before straining into the mold. Gelatine only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly mixed into the hot syrup. Undissolved granules or syrup that has cooled too much can leave soft spots or uneven setting.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes