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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A dessert made from stewed prunes mixed with beaten egg whites, baked to a brown crust and served cold with vanilla‑flavored whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Prune Pudding

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Stew the prunes until very soft and the juice is thick.

  2. Remove the stones and cut the prunes into small pieces.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites with the prunes.

  3. Bake until a nice brown crust forms on top.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with vanilla.

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.

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.

  1. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Cooked prunes form the main body, moisture and dark fruity flavor of the pudding.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air and set on baking, giving a light, firm texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the fruit base.

The step that matters

Bake until a nice brown crust forms on top. Heat sets the egg white proteins so the pudding firms, while browning comes from sugars reacting at the surface. Too little baking leaves it loose and wet; too much dries it out.

“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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