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Dessert

Prune Whip

A baked dessert of prunes, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Prune Whip

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. Stir the prunes and sugar gradually into the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream or whipped cream.

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

French prunes
Provide fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture that give the whip its colour and taste.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the dish its light, airy structure as it bakes and sets.

The step that matters

Stir the prunes and sugar gradually into the beaten egg whites. Adding the prunes and sugar slowly, while keeping the whites beaten, helps preserve the air in the foam. Deflated whites produce a dense, heavy result instead of a light, airy whip.

“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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