Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Mould

A gelatin set dessert made from prunes, water, sugar, lemon, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Prune Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Split the prunes and remove the stones.

  2. Combine prunes, 1 pint of water, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of water.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine over heat.

  3. Strain the gelatine into the saucepan.

  4. Add wine and cochineal if desired.

Set and unmould

  1. Pour the mixture into a rinsed mould.

  2. Set until firm.

  3. To unmould, dip the mould in warm water for a moment.

  4. Turn it out.

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.

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. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable mould that holds its shape when turned out.
Prunes
Provide the main flavour, sweetness and body of the mould.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the prunes and lemon.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine over heat. Gelatine must dissolve fully without boiling; overheating weakens its setting power, and undissolved granules leave a grainy or weak mould.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes