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Dessert

Prune Whip

A baked dessert of stewed prunes folded with stiff egg whites, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Prune Whip

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 ↓

Prune Whip

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. Sweeten and stew the prunes until soft.

  2. Let the prunes cool completely.

Make and bake the whip

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the cooled prunes until light.

  3. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

Cool and serve

  1. Allow to cool, then serve in a larger dish topped with 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 bulk, sweetness and fruity flavour of the whip, and moisture once puréed or stewed.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the dessert its light, airy structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites gently into the cooled prunes. Whipped egg white foam is fragile. Stirring vigorously deflates it, and hot prunes would melt and collapse the foam, so the whip would turn dense instead of light.

“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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