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Prunes, Stewed

Stewed prunes cooked with sugar, corn starch, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and sherry work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Prunes, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick prunes.

  2. Wash prunes in cold water.

  3. Place prunes in a porcelain saucepan.

  4. Cover with cold water.

Cook the prunes

  1. Cook until soft but not breaking, about 15 minutes.

  2. Add sugar. Stir.

  3. Remove prunes from the saucepan.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix corn starch with a little cold water.

  2. Stir the corn starch mixture into the juice and boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in sherry wine.

  5. Pour over the prunes.

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. Corn + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Corn + winetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Form the main body of the dish, softening as they simmer until tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the prunes.
Corn starch
Thickens the cooking juice into a light, glossy syrup when boiled.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and a mellow, fruity flavour stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Cook until soft but not breaking. Prunes simmered too hard split and turn mushy, while gentle simmering lets the flesh soften and hold its shape. Keeping the heat low and checking for tenderness protects the texture.

“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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