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Dessert

Gateau Aux Prunes

A gelatinous prune cake flavored with lemon and brandy, set in a mould 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: 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 ↓

Gateau Aux Prunes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the prune mixture

  1. Boil the prunes in water and sugar until soft.

  2. Remove the stones and crack the kernels.

  3. Add the kernels, brandy, lemon juice, lemon rind, and cochineal to the prunes.

  4. Dissolve the gelatine in a little water and add it to the prunes.

  5. Boil all ingredients for 20 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a border mould.

  2. Once set, turn it out and serve with whipped cream in the center.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 body and fruity flavour of the cake.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mould.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the prunes and helps them soften during boiling.
Brandy or marsala
Adds aroma and a warm, fortified flavour to the prunes.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before it is added to the prunes, otherwise it will not set evenly and can leave soft or grainy patches in the finished mould.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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