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Dessert

Prune Pie

A fruit pie made with prunes, sugar, lemon, and pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew, stone and mash the prunes.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon juice and rind to the prunes.

  3. Ensure the mixture is juicy.

Bake

  1. Bake the mixture between the two pie crusts.

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 a soft, jammy filling once mashed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the fruit into a smooth, spreadable filling.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity that brightens the sweet prunes, and the rind adds fragrant aroma.
Pie crusts
Enclose the filling on both sides, giving structure and holding the juicy mixture while it bakes.

The step that matters

Ensure the mixture is juicy. The prunes must release enough liquid to keep the filling moist as it bakes. If it is too dry, the filling can turn stiff and pasty, and if it is too runny, it can soak the crusts and make them soggy.

“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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