Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Pie

A fruit pie made with stewed prunes, sugar, egg, vanilla, and topped with a whipped egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the prunes until tender.

  2. Remove the pits from the prunes.

  3. Pass the prunes through a colander.

  4. Mix in sugar, beaten egg, and vanilla.

  5. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

Bake and top

  1. Bake the pie.

  2. Beat egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Gradually add sugar and a little vanilla, then spread the frosting over the pie before serving.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. 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
Provide the main body, moisture and sweetness of the filling.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets as it bakes, giving it a firmer texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they create a light, airy topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.

The step that matters

Beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff, with sugar added gradually, so the foam holds its shape. Underbeaten whites or any trace of fat in the bowl can cause the topping to collapse or weep.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes