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Dessert

Prune Whip

A light dessert made by whipping sugar, egg whites, orange juice, and stewed prunes.

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 orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Press the stewed prunes through a fine sieve to remove any lumps.

Make the whip

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar, orange juice, and 4 tablespoons of the prune pulp to the egg whites. Beat the mixture well until combined.

  3. Spoon the mixture into long stemmed glasses.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam to give the whip its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the whip and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.
Stewed prunes
Provide the main flavour and body of the whip through their pulp.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten enough to hold stiff peaks; under-beaten whites will not support the prune pulp and the whip will be dense and collapse. Fats such as yolk residue in the bowl prevent whites from foaming well, so the bowl and beaters should be clean and dry.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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