Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Prune Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the prunes
Stew and sweeten the prunes, then remove the pits and chop them slightly.
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Make the pudding
Gradually add the prunes to the egg whites while heating constantly.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.
Serve
Serve with whipped cream.
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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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
- Add sweetness, moisture and body to the pudding.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the pudding a light, set structure.
The step that matters
Gradually adding the prunes to the egg whites. Adding the prunes slowly, in small amounts, keeps the beaten foam from deflating. Heating while combining gently sets the egg proteins so the pudding holds its shape.
“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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