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Prune Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stewed prunes, sugar, lemon, and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the prune base

  1. Stew the prunes until tender and remove the pits.

  2. Add sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice, then return to the fire and bring to a boil.

  3. Thicken with corn starch until it drops from the point of a spoon.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a pudding mold and set in the ice until cold.

  2. Serve with whipped cream or plain cream sauce.

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. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 body, sweetness and fruity flavor of the pudding.
Corn starch
Thickens the prune mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sweet prunes.

The step that matters

Thicken with corn starch until it drops from the point of a spoon. Corn starch thickens when heated and must be cooked enough to gelatinize fully; undercooked starch leaves a thin, runny pudding that will not set firmly when chilled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, cream. 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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