Name: Prune Mould
Ingredients: 1 pint water; 3 oz sugar; 2 oz sweet almonds; 1 oz gelatine or agar agar; 1 lb cream

Why it works: Almond and agar share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Prune Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the gelatine or agar agar in water.
Wash the prunes thoroughly, remove the pits, and place them in a double saucepan with the sugar.
Cook the prunes for 2 hours.
In a saucepan, combine the soaked gelatine or agar agar with the soaking water and stir over heat until dissolved.
Add the prunes and their juice to the gelatine mixture and stir well.
Pour the mixture into a wet mould and let it cool.
Once cooled, stick the almonds around the mould and 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.

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.

Almond + agartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,130 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + agartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together32 recipes

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