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Dessert

Prune Souffle

A baked dessert made with prunes, beaten egg whites, powdered sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Prune Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Boil the prunes until thoroughly cooked, then rub them through a colander.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Fold in the prunes gently.

  4. Turn the mixture into a well-buttered pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for twenty minutes.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sugartop 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 flavour and moisture, and body once puréed into the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the soufflé its rise and light structure.
Powdered sugar
Stabilises the whipped egg whites and adds sweetness to the soufflé.

The step that matters

Fold in the prunes gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the stiff egg whites intact. Stirring or beating hard deflates the foam, so the soufflé will rise less and turn dense.

“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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