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Dessert

Prune Jelly

A jelly made from prunes, sugar, gelatine, prune juice, lemon and orange juice, chilled and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Prune Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak prunes in water for 6 hours.

  2. Boil prunes in the same water until tender.

  3. Add sugar and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and remove the stones.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak gelatine in ½ cup of water.

  2. Combine prune juice, lemon juice, and orange juice in a pot and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the soaked gelatine and prunes to the boiling juice.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until cold.

  5. Serve with 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.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, body and sweetness of the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly when chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly a smooth, rounded flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the soaked gelatine to the boiling juice. Gelatine must be fully dissolved to set evenly; if the liquid is left boiling hard or the gelatine is clumpy, the jelly can set unevenly or turn rubbery. Stir well off the heat or at a gentle simmer.

“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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