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Dessert

Prune Pie

A baked pie filled with stewed prunes, cream, and egg yolks, topped with a light meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Stew and mash the prunes through a colander to get 1 cup of pulp.

  2. Mix the corn-starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Add the cream, the corn-starch mixture, egg yolks, sugar, and juice to the pulp.

Bake

  1. Line a pie plate with crust.

  2. Fill the crust with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until set, being careful not to burn.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the top of the pie.

  3. Brown lightly under the broiler.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + apricottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Corn + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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, fruit flavor, and sweetness of the filling.
Egg yolks
Set during baking to thicken the filling and add richness.
Corn-starch
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Thin sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Bake until set, without burning. Egg yolks and starch set as the filling heats, so the custard firms. Overbaking tightens the egg proteins further, which can make the filling weep, curdle, or scorch on top.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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