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 ↓
Prunes in Claret
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the prunes
Stone the prunes.
Break half the stones to blanch the kernels.
Wash the prunes and place them in a saucepan with claret, sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.
Cook and set
Simmer the prunes until tender.
Dissolve gelatine in water and add to the prunes.
Stir well and serve with whipped cream or boiled custard.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Soften during simmering and form the main body of the dish.
- Gelatine
- Sets the cooking liquid so the prunes hold together when chilled.
- Claret
- Adds liquid and a wine flavour that the prunes absorb as they cook.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
The step that matters
Simmer the prunes until tender. Simmering gently softens the dried fruit evenly; boiling hard can break the prunes apart and make the syrup cloudy.
“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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