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Prune Meringue Pie

A pie filled with stewed prunes topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prune Meringue Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak enough prunes to fill a pie dish.

  2. Stew the soaked prunes.

  3. Stone the stewed prunes.

  4. Sweeten the prunes well.

  5. Add lemon juice to taste.

  6. Add a little cinnamon to the prunes.

Fill and bake

  1. Line the pie dish with the pie crust.

  2. Fill the crust with the prunes.

  3. Bake the pie until done.

  4. Remove the pie from the oven.

Top with meringue

  1. Spread meringue made from beaten egg whites mixed with 2 teaspoons of sugar on top.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Prunes
Form the main filling, providing bulk, moisture and a rich, sweet fruit flavour.
Eggs
Egg whites beaten into meringue create a light foam that sets into the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune filling.
Pie crust
Holds the filling in shape and gives the pie its base structure.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the cooked prunes.

The step that matters

Spread the meringue over the hot filling. Meringue spread so it touches the crust all round helps it seal and hold its shape. Egg white foam can shrink or weep if it is under-whipped or badly set, so beat it until stiff and bake it until lightly golden.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, egg. 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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