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Dessert

Peune Jelly

A jelly made from prunes, gelatin, sugar, salt, vanilla or lemon, and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peune Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and boil them slowly in enough water to cover until soft.

  2. Remove the stones from the prunes and sweeten to taste.

Make the jelly

  1. Add essence of vanilla or the juice and rind of a lemon, and the juice of two oranges.

  2. Soak the gelatine until soft, then add it to the prune mixture and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it stand until very cold.

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. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Cooked until soft, they supply the body, sweetness and dark fruit flavour of the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune mixture to taste and balances its tartness.
Oranges
Add bright acidity and citrus aroma to the prune base.

The step that matters

Soaking and stirring in the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully softened before it goes into the warm prune mixture, and stirred well so it dissolves evenly. Undissolved specks or lumps leave weak, uneven set spots in the finished jelly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla. 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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