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Dessert

Prune Pie

A pie filled with prunes, sugar, lemon juice, and butter, topped with a puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash prunes and soak them in cold water to cover.

  2. Cook prunes in this water until soft, then remove stones and cut them into quarters.

  3. Mix prunes with sugar and lemon juice.

  4. Reduce the prune water to 14 tablespoons.

Make the puff paste

  1. Rinse a large bowl with boiling water.

  2. Fill the bowl with cold water.

  3. Let the bowl cool.

  4. Wash hands in cold water without drying them.

  5. Wash the butter under cold water until soft.

  6. Reserve 2 tablespoons of butter.

  7. Chill the remaining butter.

  8. Make a depression in the flour on a platter.

  9. Add reserved butter, salt, sugar, and egg to the depression.

  10. Work the mixture into a paste.

  11. Add cold water slowly until a soft dough forms.

  12. Knead until smooth and elastic.

  13. Roll the dough into a rectangular sheet.

  14. Cut chilled butter into small pieces and place on the lower half of the dough.

  15. Dredge the dough with flour.

  16. Fold the upper half of the dough over the lower half.

  17. Press the edges together.

  18. Roll the dough into a long sheet.

  19. Fold the sides and ends to the center.

  20. Turn the dough halfway.

  21. Repeat rolling and folding six times.

  22. Chill between rollings if necessary.

  23. Chill the shaped dough thoroughly before baking.

  24. Ensure the dough is ice-cold when placed in the oven.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with prunes.

  3. Pour the prune liquid over the filling.

  4. Dot the filling with butter.

  5. Dredge the filling with flour.

  6. Bake with an upper crust at 400°F (200°C).

  7. Bake in a hot oven.

  8. Reduce heat once the dough has puffed to prevent burning.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Soften during cooking and provide the main fruit body and sweetness of the filling.
Flour
Forms the dough structure and, when dredged over the filling, thickens the prune juices.
Butter
Creates flaky layers in the puff paste as it melts and steams in the oven.
Egg
Enriches the dough, adding richness, binding and some structure to the paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the prunes and lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavour of the prunes.

The step that matters

Keep the puff paste ice-cold before baking. Cold butter stays in solid pieces within the dough; in a hot oven its water turns to steam and pushes the layers apart, producing flakiness. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the pastry becomes dense instead of flaky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg. 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.

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