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Dessert

Prune Souffle

A baked dessert of beaten egg whites folded with prunes and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites with cream of tartar until very stiff.

  3. Gently fold in the chopped prunes and sugar.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish placed in a pan of water.

  2. Bake slowly for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped or plain 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.

  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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidity stabilises the whipped egg white foam so it holds its volume longer.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.
Prunes
Add sweetness, moisture and deep fruity flavour to the soufflé base.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the prunes and sugar. Beaten egg white foam holds air in thin protein films. Stirring or pressing hard knocks out those bubbles, so the soufflé loses lift and bakes dense rather than light.

“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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