Name: Prune Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart prunes, stoned and stewed; 1 cup juice from prunes; 1 cup sugar; 5 egg whites

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Pudding

Ingredients

1 quart prunes, stoned and stewed
1 cup juice from prunes
1 cup sugar
5 egg whites

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

Cut the stewed prunes into small pieces.
In a bowl, combine the chopped prunes, prune juice, sugar, and egg whites, and mix well until combined.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.
Serve with whipped 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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 moisture in the pudding.
Egg whites: Set during baking to give the pudding its light, firm structure.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the prunes.

“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.