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Prune Whip

A baked dessert of stewed prunes folded with stiff egg whites and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

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 prunes

  1. Sweeten and stew the prunes until soft.

  2. Let the prunes cool completely.

Make the whip

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the cooled prunes until light and fluffy.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Allow to cool, then serve in a larger dish topped with 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream 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

Prunes
Provide the main fruit flavour, natural sweetness and body that the whip is built on.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to trap air, giving the whip its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the prunes and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the prunes. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, so the whip bakes up dense rather than light and fluffy.

“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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