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Dessert

Prune Moulds

A gelatin dessert made with prunes, bananas, sugar, lemon, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Moulds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes well and soak them overnight in 1 cup of water.

  2. Stew the prunes until tender with the sugar, lemon zest, and cinnamon stick.

  3. Remove the stones from the prunes.

Make the gelatine

  1. Combine the gelatine and 1 cup of water in a pan. Stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon juice and the syrup from the cooked prunes to the gelatine mixture. Bring to a boil.

  3. Strain into a basin.

Set the moulds

  1. Add the prunes, sliced bananas, and carmine to the mixture.

  2. When the mixture begins to set, pour it into a mold.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Banana + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together701 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + bananatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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 once stewed and stoned.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the stewed prunes and the syrup that flavours the set jelly.
Bananas
Add soft texture and mild sweetness to the set mould.

The step that matters

Pour when the mixture just begins to set. Gelatine sets as it cools. If the mixture is poured too early it stays runny, and if it sets fully in the pan the fruit cannot be evenly suspended. Pouring at the first thickening keeps the prunes and bananas distributed through the jelly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Bananathe original

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