Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Pudding

A baked pudding made with stewed prunes, port wine, and brown sugar, wrapped in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Prune Pudding

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew prunes with port wine, water, and brown sugar until soft.

  2. Remove the stones and add the kernels back to the fruit.

  3. Spread the mixture over a sheet of puff pastry and wet the edges.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll the mixture into a bolster shape and tie it firmly in a buttered and floured cloth.

  2. Boil for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Serve with a sweet wine sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Port wine + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,167 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 fruit body and sweetness of the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the prunes soften and caramelise slightly during stewing.
Port wine
Adds fruity, aromatic depth and helps soften the prunes while stewing.
Puff pastry
Forms the outer wrapper that holds the filling together during cooking.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth firmly. If the cloth is loose, water can seep in during boiling and the filling can leak out or waterlog the pastry, so the bolster should be wrapped snugly.

“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.

More prune pudding recipes

Norwegian 7Steamed 5 See all 210 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes