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Dessert

Prune Souffle

A baked dessert made from stewed prunes folded into beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash and soak the prunes overnight.

  2. Stew the prunes until very soft, then remove the pits and chop finely.

  3. Add the lemon juice to the chopped prunes.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add the sugar and salt to the beaten egg whites, and beat together.

  3. Gently fold in the chopped prunes.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately with a creamy sauce.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 flavour and body, sweetened and softened into the soufflé base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the prune flavour and helps keep the whites stable.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the chopped prunes. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air bubbles in the whipped egg whites intact. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the soufflé will rise less and turn dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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