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Dessert

Grenade of Plums

A baked plum cake made with a cream and egg yolk filling between layers of plain fritters batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Grenade of Plums

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 plums

  1. Cut the fresh plums in half and remove the stones.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the plums.

Make the topping

  1. In a bowl, beat together the cream and egg yolks.

  2. Mix the cream and egg yolk mixture with the plums.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare plain fritters batter.

  2. Place the plum mixture on top of the fritters and cover with more fritters.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) with sugar on top until golden.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Plum + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, 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

Fresh plums
Provide fruit, moisture and tartness that contrast with the rich batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the plums and helps the top brown during baking.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a softer, silkier texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling, setting as it bakes.
Plain fritters batter
Forms the cake layers that enclose the fruit and set during baking.

The step that matters

Covering the plum mixture with batter. The plum mixture is wet and heavy, so it must be fully enclosed between batter layers. Exposed fruit can leave the batter underbaked or soggy, while even coverage helps the cake set evenly.

Swap the plum

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

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

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