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Dessert

Cream Prune Pie

A pie made with stewed prunes, sweet cream, eggs, sugar, and pineapple flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash and stew the prunes until soft, then rub through a colander.

  2. In a bowl, combine the prune puree with sweet cream, beaten egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and add pineapple flavoring.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Top with beaten egg whites mixed with sugar and flavor with pineapple before serving.

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. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + pineappletop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 flavor, sweetness, and body to the filling.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard so it sets firm when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the prunes.
Egg whites
Add lightness to the filling and form the sugared topping.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg yolks set into a custard at moderate heat, and overbaking makes the proteins tighten and curdle, leaving the filling grainy and weepy.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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