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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A dessert made from stewed prunes mixed with custard and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Prune Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Prune Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes, remove the stones, and soak them in ½ cup water overnight.

  2. Stew the prunes gently in the soaking water, adding more if needed, until tender.

  3. Mash the prunes with a fork or wooden spoon and let them cool.

Make the pudding and custard

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and mix with the cooled mashed prunes.

  2. In a separate saucepan, make a custard by heating the milk and cornflour with the egg yolks, adding sugar and almond essence to taste. Let the custard cool.

Serve

  1. Heap the prunes on a glass dish.

  2. Pour the custard around them 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Plum + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

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

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

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

  5. Plum + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 body and natural sweetness of the pudding.
Eggs
Whites whipped to stiff peaks lighten the prune mixture; yolks thicken the custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and moisture.
Cornflour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Heating the custard gently. Egg yolks set as they warm, so heating too fast or too hot can curdle the custard into a grainy texture. Gentle heat lets the cornflour and yolks thicken it smoothly.

“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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