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Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert of stewed prunes folded with stiff egg whites and topped with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Prune Whip

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Stew the prunes and sweeten to taste, then remove the pits.

  2. Let the prunes cool completely.

Make the whip

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the prunes until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve cold, covered with rich 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.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Provide the main fruit flavour, sweetness and body that forms the base of the whip.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the mixture and give it a airy, set structure when baked.
Cream
Adds richness and a cool, smooth contrast to the warm-set, tart-sweet prune base.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites trap air only when beaten to stiff peaks; under-beaten whites collapse into the prunes, leaving a dense, flat result instead of a light, risen whip.

“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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