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Dessert

Prune Pie

A fruit pie made with prunes, sugar, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and soak them in cold water for at least an hour.

  2. Cook the prunes in the same water until soft.

  3. Remove the pits and cut the prunes into pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the prunes in a pie crust and add sugar, lemon juice, and a sprinkling of flour.

  2. Dot with small bits of butter, cover with a top crust, and bake.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 filling, sweetness and soft texture once cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the prunes.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the prunes as the pie bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enhances flavor and browning.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the flour over the prunes. Flour starch thickens the fruit juices as the pie heats. Without an even sprinkling, the filling can stay runny or form pockets of paste, and it may bubble over or soften the bottom crust.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter. 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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