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Dessert

Prune Sauce

A sauce made from Turkish prunes, water, sugar, cinnamon, and optional orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Prune Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes in hot water.

  2. Boil the prunes in cold water until very soft.

  3. Remove the pits from the prunes.

  4. Strain the boiling water over the prunes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Sweeten the prunes to taste.

  2. Flavor with ground cinnamon.

  3. Mash the prunes with your hands until soft.

  4. If too thick, add the juice of an orange.

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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Turkish prunes
Form the bulk of the sauce and provide its body and natural sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the fruit's flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the prunes until very soft. Prolonged heating in water softens the dried fruit's cell walls and pectin, so the prunes can break down into a smooth sauce when mashed. Stopping early leaves lumps and a coarse texture.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon. 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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