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Dessert

Norwegian Prune Pudding

A pudding made from prunes, water, sugar, corn starch, lemon juice, and served with whipped cream or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Norwegian Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and boil them until the stones can be removed.

  2. Crack the stones and add the prunes to the water and sugar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Thicken and mold

  1. Mix corn starch with a little cold water, then add to the boiling mixture and stir until it thickens.

  2. Cook for a little longer, then add the lemon juice.

  3. Mold the pudding and serve with whipped cream or sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg yolks and any desired flavoring.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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 flavour and the body of the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling prune mixture so it sets into a firm pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the prunes and the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the sauce its light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Folded into the sauce to add richness and body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch. Corn starch must be mixed with cold water first and then stirred into the boiling mixture. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and thickens unevenly, and the pudding may not set smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, cream, egg, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, cream, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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