Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓
Prune Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the prunes
Wash the prunes and place them in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover them.
Cook the prunes until soft, about 15 minutes.
Add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the prunes 15 minutes before they are done.
Cook the oat groats
Wash the oat groats and cook them in a saucepan with ½ pint of cold water over boiling water for 45 minutes.
Make the custard
In another saucepan, heat the milk, remaining sugar, cinnamon, and salt.
Beat the yolks with a spoonful of cold milk and stir into the warm milk until it thickens, but do not let it boil.
Stir in the cooked oat meal, rusk, and prunes, then remove from heat.
Beat the egg whites with 2 teaspoons of sugar until stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.
Serve
Serve warm, without sauce.
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.
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Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 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
- Dried prunes
- Soften during cooking to provide sweetness, moisture and the main body of the pudding.
- Oat groats
- Cook down to a starchy, thickening base that gives the pudding its body.
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the milk into a custard, while whites are folded in for lightness.
- Rich sweet milk
- Forms the custard base, and its proteins set when gently heated with the yolks.
- Crushed double baked rusk
- Adds dry crumb that helps absorb moisture and firm up the pudding.
The step that matters
Thickening the yolks into the milk. If the warm milk boils after the yolks go in, the egg proteins scramble and the custard turns grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stop once it thickens.
“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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