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Dessert

Prune Whip

A chilled dessert of prunes folded into stiff egg whites, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Prune Whip

Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Cook prunes until very tender and sweeten them.

  2. Pass the prunes through a colander.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gradually beat in the prunes with the egg whites.

  3. Whip the mixture together for about five minutes.

Chill and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Serve with unsweetened 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 + 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the dessert its light, airy structure as it sets.
Prunes
Provide sweetness, moisture and a dense, smooth body that flavours the mixture.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the prunes with the egg whites. Adding the prunes slowly keeps the stiff egg white foam from collapsing. Deflated whites lose the air that lightens the mixture and makes it set airy rather than heavy.

“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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