Why it works: Cranberry and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Prune Tart
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the filling
Scald the prunes and remove the stones.
Break the prunes and return the kernels to them.
Simmer the prunes with water or cranberry juice and add moist sugar to taste.
Assemble and bake
Once cooled, place the mixture into a tart or pie dish.
Cover with a light crust.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.
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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Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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, sweetness and a soft, jammy filling as they cook.
- Moist sugar
- Adds sweetness and a rich, slightly caramel flavour that balances the fruit.
- Light crust
- Encloses the filling and gives a contrasting crisp, browned texture when baked.
The step that matters
Simmer the prunes until cooled before filling. The filling should be cooled before it goes into the crust, so the pastry does not turn soggy from hot liquid and steam.
“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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