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Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert made from prunes, apricots, sugar, eggs, milk, and flour, served with custard or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Prune Whip

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 ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook prunes and apricots until tender; remove pits and skins.

  2. Return fruit to the pan, add sugar, and cook until it becomes a pulp.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Make the custard

  1. For the custard, whisk together egg yolks, sweet milk, flour, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve the prune whip with custard or 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.

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

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

  2. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Prunes
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness and flavor for the whip.
Apricots
Add extra fruit flavor and pulp to the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the pulp and give the whip its airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Helps stabilize and thicken the custard along with the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Low heat and constant stirring let the custard thicken smoothly as the proteins set gently.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

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