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Dessert

Gateau De Prunes

A French cake made with stewed prunes, a syrup of red currant jelly, sugar, lemon, and gelatin, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Gateau De Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Stew the prunes in water for 1½ hours.

  2. Remove the prunes and take out the stones using a skewer.

Make the syrup

  1. In the same water, dissolve the red currant jelly, then add sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin; simmer together.

Set and serve

  1. Fill a border mould with the syrup and prunes; let it cool.

  2. Turn out onto a dish and fill the center with whipped cream, or serve the cream separately.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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 fruit flavour and soft, tender body once stewed.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a tart fruit flavour to the syrup while helping it colour.
Gelatine
Sets the syrup so the cake holds its shape when turned out of the mould.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the lemon and jelly.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut through the sweetness of the prunes.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine in the syrup and simmer. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and kept just below a hard boil, since boiling can weaken its setting power. Incomplete dissolving leaves gritty or unset patches, so the mould may not hold its shape.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, cream. 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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