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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A sweet pudding made from prunes, sugar, cinnamon, lemon rind, and thickened with cornstarch.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak prunes in cold water to cover for 2 hours.

  2. Cook prunes in the same water until soft.

  3. Remove stones from prunes.

Make the pudding

  1. Add sugar, cinnamon, lemon rind, and boiling water; cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Dilute cornstarch with enough cold water to pour easily.

  3. Add diluted cornstarch to hot mixture and cook for 4 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove cinnamon, pour mixture into a mold, and chill thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,510 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 sweetness, and soften to form the pudding's body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, setting the pudding into a sliceable shape when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tartness of the prunes.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic citrus notes that lift the dark fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch mixture while it cooks. Cornstarch settles and can clump on the bottom of the pan if left still. Constant stirring keeps it dispersed so it thickens evenly into a smooth pudding without lumps or scorching.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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