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Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert made from cooked prunes, nut meats, and beaten egg whites, baked until set and served cold.

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

Why it works: Egg and sugar 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

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. Cook prunes in water until tender, then cool and remove pits.

  2. Cut prunes into small bits.

Bake and serve

  1. Add nut meats and fold in well-beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the eggs are set.

  3. Serve cold with 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, sweetness and moisture that give the whip its body.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air and set in the oven to give the dish its light structure.
Nut meats
Add texture and a toasty, rich flavour that contrasts with the soft prune base.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Egg whites must be well beaten and folded in gently so they keep their trapped air. Overmixing deflates the foam, and the whip will bake up 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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