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Dessert

Prune Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked prunes, sugar, egg whites, and sweet milk, topped with a custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Prune Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak the prunes and stew them until very soft.

  2. Remove the seeds and beat the prunes until light.

  3. Sweeten the prunes with ⅓ cup of sugar.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg whites and fold them into the prunes.

  2. Bake in a buttered pan at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

Make the custard sauce

  1. For the custard sauce, beat the egg yolks into 1 pint of sweet milk and add ⅓ cup of sugar.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 body, moisture and fruity flavour of the pudding once beaten smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and help the pudding rise and set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune base and balances the tartness of the fruit.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard sauce served with the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites into the prunes. Whites hold air only while whipped. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the pudding rises and turns light instead of dense when baked.

“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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