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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A baked dessert made from prunes, egg whites, and sugar, served cold with cream.

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

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Boil the prunes until soft.

  2. Let them cool.

  3. Pass the cooled prunes through a colander and beat until smooth.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until well combined.

Combine and bake

  1. Fold the egg white mixture into the prunes and mix thoroughly.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. Serve cold with 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. Egg + sugartop 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 body, sweetness and fruity flavour of the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the pudding its light, airy structure when baked.
Fine sugar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites and adds sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must form a stable foam; under-beaten whites stay runny and collapse, while the sugar added gradually helps hold the foam so the pudding rises and stays light.

“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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