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Dessert

Another Prune Loaf

A loaf made from prunes, water, port wine, isinglass, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 805 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Another Prune Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Stone the prunes and blanch the kernels.

  2. Boil the prunes with the kernels, a little water, port wine, dissolved isinglass, and brown sugar.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

  2. Once cold, turn it out of the mold.

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. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 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 body and flavour that the loaf is built around.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cooled mixture so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Port wine
Adds depth and aroma to the fruit during boiling.

The step that matters

Turn it out of the mold once cold. The loaf must be fully cold so the isinglass has set firmly; unmolding too early can cause it to slump or tear.

“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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