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Dessert

Jellied Prunes

A chilled dessert made by cooking prunes with gelatin, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jellied Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Pick over the prunes.

  2. Wash the prunes.

  3. Soak the prunes in 2 cups of cold water for several hours.

  4. Cook the prunes in the same water until soft.

  5. Remove the prunes from the water.

  6. Stone the prunes.

  7. Cut the prunes into quarters.

Make the jelly

  1. Add enough boiling water to the prune water to make 2 cups.

  2. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup cold water.

  3. Dissolve the gelatin in the hot liquid.

  4. Add sugar and lemon juice to the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Add the prunes to the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Mold the mixture.

  2. Chill the mixture.

  3. Stir twice while cooling to prevent prunes from settling.

  4. Serve with sugar and cream.

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body, sweetness and flavour in the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the prune liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and offsets the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully in the hot liquid. Gelatine only sets properly when it is completely dissolved. Undissolved granules leave weak or grainy spots, so the jelly may not set evenly.

“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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